To help us put names with faces, I have included in this post pictures of all of you in sections 08 and 18 with picture captions that list your names. I encourage you to review this page frequently. In between the pictures, I have included lists of first names that are also common nouns, making them playable in Scrabble.

• Al: a type of East Indian tree
• Alan: a breed of hunting dog (also aland, alant)
• Alec: a herring
• Ally: an advocate
• Ana: a collection of miscellany about a specific topic
• Ananda: extreme happiness
• Anna: a former Indian coin
• Ava: at all, of all
• Bailey: an outer castle wall
• Barbie: a barbecue
• Belle: a pretty woman
• Ben: an inner room
• Benny: an amphetamine pill
• Bertha: a style of wide collar
• Beth: a Hebrew letter
• Biff: to hit
• Bill: to charge for goods
• Billy: a short club
• Bo: a friend
• Bobby: a policeman
• Bonnie: pretty (also bonny)
• Brad: a small nail or tack
• Brock: a badger

• Calla: a tropical plant
• Cam: a rotating or sliding piece of machinery
• Carl: a peasant or manual laborer (also carle)
• Carol: to sing merrily
• Celeste: a percussive keyboard instrument (also celesta)
• Chad: a scrap of paper
• Charlie: a fool
• Chase: to pursue
• Chevy: to chase (also chivy)
• Christie: a type of turn in skiing (also christy)
• Clarence: an enclosed carriage
• Dalton: a unit of atomic mass
• Dagwood: a large, stuffed sandwich
• Daphne: a flowering shrub with poisonous berries
• Davy: a safety lamp
• Deb: a debutante
• Devon: a breed of cattle
• Dexter: located to the right
• Dick: a detective
• Dom: a title given to some monks
• Don: to put on a piece of clothing
• Donna: an Italian woman of repute
• Erica: a shrub of the heath family
• Florence: a former European gold coin
• Franklin: a nonnoble medieval English landowner
• Fritz: a nonworking or semi-functioning state
• Gi: a white garment worn in martial arts
• Gilbert: a unit of magneto-motive force
• Gilly: to transport on a type of train car
• Graham: whole-wheat flour
• Hank: to secure a sail
• Haven: a shelter
• Henry: a unit of electric inductance
• Herby: full of herbs
• Jack: to hoist with a type of lever
• Jacky: a sailor
• Jake: okay, satisfactory
• Jane: a girl or woman
• Jay: any of various birds, known for their crests and shrill calls
• Jean: denim
• Jenny: a female donkey
• Jerry: a German soldier
• Jess: to fasten a strap around the leg of a bird in falconry (also Jesse)

• Jill: a unit of measure equal to to 1/4 of a pint
• Jimmy: to pry open
• Joannes: a Portugese coin (also johannes)
• Joe: a fellow
• Joey: a young kangaroo
• John: a toilet
• Johnny: a hospital gown
• Jones: a strong desire
• Jordan: a type of container
• Joseph: a woman’s long cloak
• Josh: to tease
• Kelly: a bright shade of green
• Kelvin: a unit of absolute temperature
• Ken: to know
• Kent: past tense of ken
• Kerry: a breed of cattle
• Kris: a curved dagger
• Lars: plural of lar, a type of ancient Roman guardian deity (also lares)
• Lassie: a lass
• Laura: an aggregation of hermitages used by monks
• Laurel: to crown one’s head with a wreath
• Lee: to shelter from the wind
• Louie: a lieutenant
• Louis: a former gold coin of France worth twenty francs
• Marcel: to make waves in the hair using a special iron
• Marge: a margin
• Mark: a line, figure, or symbol
• Martin: any type of the bird also known as a swallow
• Marvy: marvelous
• Matilda (a hobo’s bundle (chiefly Australian)
• Matt: to put a dull finish on (also matte)
• Maxwell: a unit of magnetic flux
• Mel: honey
• Melody: an agreeable succession of musical sounds
• Merle: a blackbird
• Mickey: a drugged drink
• Mike: a microphone (also mic)
• Milt: to fertilize with fish sperm
• Minny: a minnow
• Mo: a moment
• Molly: a type of tropical fish
• Morgan: a unit of frequency in genetics
• Morris: a type of folk dance from England
• Morse: describing a type of code made of long and short signals
• Mort: a note sounded in hunting to announce the death of prey

• Nelson: a type of wrestling hold
• Newton: the unit of force required to accelerate one kilogram of mass on meter per second
• Nick: to make a shallow cut
• Norm: a standard
• Pam: the name of the jack of clubs in some card games
• Parker: one who parks a motorized vehicle
• Peter: to lessen gradually
• Pia: a fine membrane of the brain and spinal cord
• Randy: sexually excited
• Regina: a queen
• Rex: a king
• Rick: to stack, hay, corn, or straw
• Roger: the pirate flag
• Sal: salt
• Sally: to make a brief trip or a sudden start
• Sawyer: one who saws wood
• Shawn: past tense of show
• Sheila: a girl or young woman
• Sol: the fifth note on a diatonic scale (also so)
• Sonny: a boy or young man
• Sophy: a former Persian ruler
• Spencer: a type of sail
• Tad: a young boy
• Tammie: a fabric used in linings (also tammy)
• Ted: to spread for drying
• Teddy: a woman’s one-piece undergarment
• Terry: a soft, absorbent type of cloth
• Tiffany: a thin, mesh fabric
• Timothy: a Eurasian grass used for grazing
• Toby: a drinking mug in the shape of a man or a man’s face
• Tod: a British unit of weight for wool equal to twenty-eight pounds
• Tom: the male of various animals
• Tommy: a loaf or chunk of bread
• Tony: very stylish
• Vera: very
• Victoria: a light, four-wheeled carriage
• Warren: an area where rabbits live, or a crowded maze-like place
• Webster: one who weaves
• Will: to choose, decree, or induce to happen
• Willow: a tree or shrub
• Willy: to clean fibers with a certain machine

Bonus Assignment Opportunity!

Students who correctly respond to the playable first names and last names question below will earn a bonus assignment credit, which means they will have an extra assignment in the short assignments category. Completing a bonus assignment such as this one will offset a low class exercise or pop quiz grade.

Which students in English 1103.08 have first and/or last names that are playable Scrabble words? Keep in mind that only playable first names appear in the lists above. Some students may have playable last names as well–and in fact, there are more playable last names in your class than there are first names

Directions for Finding and Submitting Your Answer

1. Review the list of playable first names, compare it with the students’ first and last names in the photo captions above, or on the class page, and determine which of the students’ first and last names are playable in Scrabble. If you aren’t sure whether a name is also a common noun, you can consult the Scrabble website’s dictionary and Merriam Webster’s Scrabble Dictionary site.
2. Compose a response of one or more complete sentences that includes the first and last name of each student with a playable name. Indicate which name, first or last, is playable.
3. Post your comment as a reply to this blog post by 9:00 a.m. on Monday, January 12.
4. To post your comment, click the title of the post, “What’s in a Name. . . . ,” then scroll down to the bottom of the post. There you will see the image of an airmail envelope with a white rectangular box for your comment. Type your comment in the box and hit return. Voila! You have submitted your answer. Good luck! I will make the comments visible before class on Monday, January 12.

Next Up

For class on Monday, you will read David Sedaris‘s essay “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” which is posted in the readings folder on Blackboard. You do not need to print a copy. I will distribute copies in class. We will examine Sedaris’ essay as a model for your own literacy narrative, which you will begin drafting in class on Wednesday.

First, an Introduction

Every Friday is WordPlay Day, which means that the class period will be devoted to Scrabble games in which you and one of your classmates will play as a team against two other classmates. Before the beginning of class each Friday, volunteers will draw four names at a time at random to form five groups of four and write the group members’ first and last names on the white board. If you arrive early to class, please volunteer to help with the name-drawing or name-writing (on the whiteboard) process.

If you haven’t played Scrabble before, this short video tutorial will provide you with a helpful overview of the game. Also, I will be offering a brief introduction to the game myself at the beginning of class and will be available to answer your questions, except these: (1) Is this a word? and (2) Is this a playable word? For the answers to those questions, you must rely on your own knowledge and that of your teammate.

You may think of Scrabble solely as a game that increases players’ word power, but it also fosters creative problem-solving skills and foresight. And for those who play in teams, as you will in English 1103, it offers exercises in collaboration. Through my own research on the game, I have learned that college faculty in a variety of disciplines incorporate Scrabble into their classes, including an English professor at California State University-Monterey Bay, a professor of Christian education at MidAmerica Nazarene University, and a professor of engineering at Tomsk Polytechnic University in Russia.

Each week I will publish a blog entry devoted to tips for improving your game. This week’s post focuses on parallel play and two-letter words beginning with a.

Parallel Play and Two-Letter Words Beginning with “A”

Parallel play increases your score through the points you earn by spelling more than one word in a single turn. In the first play of the hypothetical game pictured at the top of this post, the first player or team would score sixteen points by spelling enact with the t on the center double-word square. With the second turn, the other player or team could take advantage of the opportunity for parallel play. If the team knew that aa is a type of lava, they could earn twenty-four points with four words: whoa, he, on, and aa.

Aa is one of sixteen playable two-letter words beginning with a. Learning these two-letter words, as well as the others that follow in the alphabet, will enable you to see more options for play and increase the number of points you earn in a single turn.

• aa: a type of stony, rough lava
• ab: an abdominal muscle
• ad: an advertisement
• ae: one
• ag: agriculture
• ah: an exclamation
• ai: a three-toed sloth
• al: a type of East Indian tree
• am: the first-person singular present form of to be
• an: an indefinite article
• ar: the letter r
• as: similar to
• at: in the position of
• aw: an expression of sadness or protest
• ax: a type of cutting tool (also axe)
• ay: a vote in the affirmative (also aye)

Recording Scores

The image of the hypothetical game below includes seven words that were spelled in the players’ first two turns. Examine the scoresheet beside it and note how the scores are recorded.

Because both teams played multiple words in their second turn, those words are recorded in the same space. Each cell is for a single turn, not a single word. The second line in each score column is for the score of the second play. The line that follows the plus-sign line is for the total. Maintaining a running tally enables all the players to see the current scores at a glance.

For the task of completing the scoresheet, select the team member with the best penmanship. Make sure that the writer you appoint records the first and last names of each group member, the section number, and the date. After a blank tile is played, the writer should write the designated letter in the box provided (see the two boxes near the top of the sheet). Remember that the designated letter for a blank cannot change once the letter has been played and recorded on the score sheet.

Important Note about Challenges

If you think that the opposing team has played a word that isn’t permissible, such as a misspelled word or a proper noun, tell me that you have a challenge. I will consult the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary to determine whether the word in question is playable. If the challenged word isn’t playable, the team that set it down loses a turn. Conversely, if the challenged word is playable, the team that called the challenge loses a turn.

The Scrabble socks pictured above were a Christmas gift that I will wear for the first time tomorrow. To commemorate our Wordplay Days, I will sport these socks each Friday.

Next Up

Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, look to the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website, Merriam-Webster’s Scrabble Word Finder page, and review this post devoted to Scrabble tips.