Tarpons (a kind of fish - and I knew that without looking it up)

[watervole]

I'm definitely getting better at Scrabble. (having six games going at once is giving me plenty of practice)

I'm getting much better at hooking words onto other words (though still not as good as Waveney) and I'm managing to get the magic seven letter words now and then.  Got one today which I was pleased with - they're still a novelty to me, this is about the third one in my entire life...

It's easier since I picked up a useful tip on rack building from dougs.  I'd never thought about that aspect of the game before.

I find my preferred technique is to print out the board and then go away and play around with it for a while with a pencil.  I juggle anagrams best by writing the letters down in a jumble and letting the eye jump between them in different patterns.  I've printed out the two letter word list as well.  I find that very useful to have to hand as different versions of Scrabble have different lists of which ones are valid.  Our Scrabble dictionary at home has a different set from either of those used by Scrabbulous.  (Mind you, I looked at one web site which listed all the different Scrabble word lists and nearly had heart failure - there's around 20 of them)

How do other players go about looking for words?  Do you work best on screen, on paper, with actual tiles?

Comments

[lucas-t-bear.livejournal.com]

There's a large group of us at work who started out playing offline in the canteen at lunchtime and have migrated to Scrabulous since we can't always sychronise our lunchbreaks.

Juggling the rack order around always seems to work best for all of us regardless of the medium; once you get near something that looks like it *should* be a word then you check the dictionary (or offline you get another player to look up!)

Sadly Scrabulous has one major drawback - it doesn't have Pinto our canteen chef who is the best player I've ever seen and is generally happy to help/advise/play on behalf of anyone who lavishly praises his cooking!

[watervole.livejournal.com]

absolutely. I check things that sound as though they should be words in my paper Scrabble dictionary and then check to see if the online dictionary agrees.

I'm already getting far more aware of suffixes and prefixes.

[temeres.livejournal.com]

Erm ... I may be a greying old fogie but ... doesn't looking words up before you play them count as cheating?

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Depends on what rules you're playing. Scrabbulous has two options, regular and challenge. In regular, you're allowed to check the words and a checker is provided. In 'challenge' you are not allowed to check and an opponent may challenge. The latter version obviously requires both online players to trust that their opponent won't look up a work.

I play regular.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Not related to this, but: Hallo Judith, you might remember me from contacts many years ago back in the world of PBM. Hope all is good with you and your family!
best,
Mo

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Mo H I presume?

Would you like to come to Silvercon? There'll be a couple of old PBM hands there, along with gamers we've got to know in more recent years. (19-21 Oct)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

That's very kind, thanks! It sounds great -- but we're on drop-everything emergency standby for the next few weeks, as my sister-in-law's just had a baby, so I'd better not say Yes.
By the way, I've been living in Ipswich for the last five years or so, not too far from your old stomping-ground? It's great -- we're very happy here.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

It's a nice area in East Anglia. Bit flat for a notherner like me, but I grew very fond of Norwich as a student.

[megamole.livejournal.com]

Rack building is a good thing.

Remember that the most versatile combination of letters is AEINRST.