In the previous weeks, Scrabble blog posts have featured playable two-letter words beginning with the letters a through l. Today’s post features the playable two-letter words beginning with m, n, o, and p. Learning these two-letter words, as well as the other two-letter words in the alphabet, will enable you to see more options for play and increase the number of points you earn in a single turn.
M, by the way, is the most versatile consonant. In the first position, m pairs with every vowel: ma, me, mi, mo, mu, and also my. In the second position, m pairs with every vowel except i: am, em, om, um.
ma: a mother
me: a singular objective pronoun
mi: a tone of the diatonic scale
mm: an expression of assent
mo: a moment
mu: a Greek letter
my: a first-person possessive adjective
na: no, not
ne: born with the name of (also nee)
no: a negative answer
nu: a Greek letter
od: a hypothetical force
oe: a whirlwind off the Faero Islands
of: originating from
oh: an exclamation of surprise
oi: an expression of dismay (also oy)
om: a sound used as a mantra
on: the batsman’s side in cricket
op: a style of abstract art dealing with optics
or: the heraldic color gold
os: a bone
ow: used to express pain
ox: a clumsy person
oy: an expression of dismay (also oi)
pa: a father
pe: a Hebrew letter
pi: a Greek letter
Don’t Go There (in Scrabble)
Baum, L. Frank. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. 1900. Barnes & Noble Classics, 2005.
Occasionally, students will play oz, which isn’t one of the words in the list above. It’s absent from that list because it’s a proper noun that isn’t also a common noun.
That isn’t the case with the name of Dorothy’s aunt, Em, which is playable as the common noun em: the letter m and the width of a piece of type about as wide as it is tall, used as a unit of measure of typeset matter (hence the term em dash).
And if the letters on your rack spell emerald–the first word in the name of Oz’s capital city–and you can play them all in one turn, you will earn an extra fifty points for playing all seven of your letters. Ditto for cyclone and tornado, words for the storm that sends Dorothy on her journey, and woodman, the second word in her tin friend’s name.
Next Up
Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, revisit the Merriam-Webster Scrabble Word Finder page, and review your journal notes and the blog posts devoted to Scrabble.
Previous Scrabble blog posts featured playable two-letter words beginning with the letters a through e. Today’s entry lists playable two-letter words beginning with f, g, h, i, j, k, and l. Learning these two-letter words, as well as the other two-letter words in the alphabet, will enable you to see more options for play and may increase your score.
fa: a tone on the diatonic scale
fe: a Hebrew letter (also feh)
gi: a white garment worn in martial arts
go: a Japanese board game
ha: used to express surprise
he: a pronoun signifying a male
hi: an expression of greeting
hm: used to express consideration
ho: used to express surprise
id: the least censored part of the three-part psyche
if: a possibility
in: to harvest (a verb, takes -s, -ed, -ing)
is: the third-person singular present form of “to be”
it: a neuter pronoun
jo: a sweetheart
ka: the spiritual self in ancient Egyptian spirituality
ki: the vital life force in Chinese spirituality (also qi)
la: a tone of the diatonic scale
li: a Chinese unit of distance
lo: an expression of surprise
It’s all Greek to Me
Since this week finds us in the midst of sorority and fraternity rush, today’s post includes the Greek alphabet. The names of all twenty-four letters are playable words.
alpha
beta
gamma
delta
epsilon
zeta
eta
theta
iota
kappa
lambda
mu
nu
xi
omicron
pi
rho
sigma
tau
upsilon
phi
chi (also khi)
psi
omega
The idiom “it’s all Greek to me,” used to describe anything hard to understand, was popularized by Julius Caesar, in which the character Casca says he didn’t understand a word Cicero spoke (in Greek) at the festival (Shakespeare 1.2).
Thanks to Shakespeare, Greek, sometimes with a lowercase g, is playable in Scrabble as a common noun meaning anything unintelligible.
Next Up
On Monday, after your Scrabble debriefing, we will examine “A Bridge to Words,” which I will distribute today. Read and annotate your copy before Monday’s class. If you were absent today or misplace your copy, print one from Blackboard.
This morning in class, after your Scrabble debriefing, we will examine “Creativity is Key,” which you read and annotated for today. In groups, you and two or three of your classmates will compose a brief written assessment of the essay and determine a letter grade for it, based on the assignment guidelines and grade criteria.
Once you have evaluated “Creativity is Key,” we will discuss it as a class. After that, I will distribute copies of a second student literacy narrative for you to read, assess, and grade.
For your reference, your group worksheet lists the literacy narrative’s guidelines and grade criteria, which also appear below.
Guidelines
The focus should be one of the following:
A memory of a reading or writing assignment that you recall vividly
Someone who helped you learn to read or write
A writing-related school event that you found humorous or embarrassing
A particular type of writing that you found (or still find) challenging
A memento that represents an important moment in your development as a reader or writer
Learning a second language
The narrative should be a well-told story that includes the following elements:
Vivid detail
Some indication of the narrative’s significance
A minimum of 600 words
A title that offers a window into your essay (It should not be titled “Literacy Narrative.”)
All three major writing assignments for English 1103, including the literacy narrative, must comply with MLA style guidelines.
Grade Criteria
An A literacy narrative complies with all assignment guidelines: It presents a well-told story, includes vivid details, and conveys the story’s significance in a way that demonstrates a depth of understanding. An A literacy narrative is also well-organized and relatively free of surface errors.
A B literacy narrative complies with all assignment guidelines but may convey the significance of the story superficially, may have organization issues, or may be flawed by surface errors.
A C literacy narrative complies with most but not all assignment guidelines and may be flawed by organization issues and/or surface errors.
A D literacy narrative complies with only a few of the assignment guidelines and may also be flawed by organization issues and/or surface errors.
An F literacy narrative fails to comply with most or all assignment guidelines and may also be flawed by substantial issues of organization and/or surface errors.
Scrabble Debriefing, continued
Today’s Scrabble debriefing will continue with a study of some of the plays in the games pictured below. Answers to the questions that I pose about those plays are included at the end of the post.
Acronyms: To Act or Not to Act?
If you have the letters to form an acronym, should you act on it? Each of the following two games includes an acronym. In the first game, the acronym appears once. In the second game, the same acronym was played twice, once using a blank tile. What is an acronym, and are the acronyms below playable in Scrabble?
When You Draw a Blank
In the game below, a team used a blank on a bonus square to score a two-letter double-word play with the letter a. Although that play is permissible, it isn’t advisable. Why should the team have chosen a different play? The game also includes four unplayable words. The fourth unplayable word was formed by pluralizing (adding s) to an unplayable word.
Assessing S
In the game that follows, a team played two s tiles to form the single word toss. The play is similar to the play of blank in the previous game because although the play is permissible, it isn’t advisable. Why should the team have chosen a different play?
The Long and Short of It
The word vigorous in the game below was formed by adding “o-u-s” to vigor, yet another play that is permissible but not advisable. Why should the team have chosen a different play? Consider that the words duo and tour had already been played–and what letter had not been played?
Three Letters, Three Words
In the game below, in one play, a team formed one of the two-letter b words featured in Friday’s post, along with two other words for a total of forty-eight points. What is the two-letter b word and what are the other two?
Up Next
Wednesday will be devoted to revision work. I will return your literacy narrative drafts, and you will then have the remainder of the class period to begin revising on your laptops. You will have an additional week to continue revising before posting to Blackboard and WordPress. The due date for your literacy narrative is Wednesday, September 9, before class; the hard deadline is Friday, September 11, before class.
Answers
Acronyms: To Act or Not to Act? An acronym is a series of letters in which each letter is the first letter in a word. For example, NASA is an acronym for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Acronyms are not playable in Scrabble. MIA, which was played in the first game, is an acronym for missing in action. Note that the word bon–playable in French Scrabble but not in the North American game–was also played. IQ, which was played twice in the second game, once with a blank, is an acronym for intelligence quotient.
When You Draw a Blank: Though the blank tile followed by the a can form many permissible two-letter words, it earns the team only two points for the double-word play. In all likelihood, the team could have scored more points elsewhere by playing one or more lettered tiles. Keep in mind that a blank can be used as any letter, but it has no point value. Also note that four unplayable words were played in the same game: taft, ea, df, and tafts.
Assessing S: Playing toss for six points is permissible but not advisable because the team probably could have earned six or more points by playing other letters and saving the two s tiles for higher-scoring words. Also, the placement of toss offers the opposing team the opportunity to make a triple-word play on the bottom row.
The Long and Short of It: Playing vigorous was a risky move that only gained the team thirteen points. It was a risky play because two of the four u tiles had been used (to form tour and duo), and the q had not been played. Even if the team could not score as many as thirteen points elsewhere, a lower-scoring play would have been preferable to losing a u and an s for a gain of only thirteen.
Three Letters, Three Words: One team’s knowledge of the two-letter word bi in last Friday’s post enabled its players to form three words in a single play: fix, bi, and ox, which earned the team a double double-word score for fix and ox with the x on the double-word square. That double double-word score and the additional word bi earned the team forty-eight points for a turn in which they played only three letters. The unplayable word pedels–a misspelling of pedals, perhaps–was played later in the game.
The first Scrabble blog post of the semester featured playable two-letter words beginning with a. Learning those two-letter words, as well as the others that follow in the alphabet, will enable you to see more options for play and can increase the number of points you earn in a single turn.
Here’s a list of the playable words beginning with b, d, and e:
ba: the soul in ancient Egyptian spirituality
bi: a bisexual
bo: a pal
by: a side issue
de: of, from
do: to perform, also a tone on a scale
ed: education
ef: the letter f (also eff)
eh: used to express doubt
el: an elevated train
em: the letter m
en: the letter n
er: used to express hesitation
es: the letter s
et: a past tense of eat
ex: the letter x
When in Doubt . . .
Consult the guidelines (in the game box) if you are unsure whether an action is permissible in gameplay. An additional copy of the guidelines follows.
Scrabble Guidelines
Do not let your opponents know which letters are on your rack. Whenever possible, communicate with your teammate nonverbally by pointing to the letters and rearranging them on the rack. If you need to refer out loud to letters on your rack, refer to them as “this one, that one . . . .”
Do not say the definition of a word aloud. If you play a word and your opponents question its validity, do not provide the definition. Definitions can be provided only in the event of a challenge. See the note below regarding challenges. Also, note that you will have the opportunity on your own after class to look up the meanings of any unfamiliar words played by your opponents or recommended by your teammate and subsequently played by the two of you. You will also have the chance to look up definitions during your Monday debriefings.
If you think your opponents have 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 and will provide the definition. 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.
If any group member’s smartphone or laptop is in evidence during the game, immediately tell that person to put it away. The presence of any player’s digital device is a foul—as is providing a definition or otherwise offering unauthorized assistance—and fouls come with penalties, five points each.
Repetition, Plurals, and Competitive Scrabble
Fatsis, Stefan. Word Freak. 2001. Penguin, 2002.
One question raised during last Friday’s Scrabble games was whether a team can play a word that has already been played, either by that team or the opponent. The answer is yes; you can play the same word multiple times in a single game. Scrabble has no rule prohibiting repetition.
Another question raised was whether you can play plurals. You can, but unless playing the letter s enables you to form multiple words in a single play and earn a substantially higher score, keeping the s tile on your rack (for a higher score in a later play) is a better option.
Are there Scrabble tournaments? That’s another question asked last Friday. Yes, hardcore players do compete in tournaments, and journalist Stefan Fatsis’ book Word Freak (pictured above) documents his immersion in the competitive Scrabble subculture.
Competitive Scrabble is also chronicled in the documentary film Word Wars (2004).
Next Up
On Monday, we will examine “Creativity is Key,” the sample student literacy narrative that I will distribute today. In class on Monday, I will distribute a second student literacy narrative, and in groups, you and your classmates will assess the two. If you were absent today or misplaced your copy of “Creativity is Key,” download a copy from Blackboard and print it.
Coming Soon
Next Wednesday will be devoted to revision work. I will return your literacy narrative drafts, and you will then have the remainder of the class period to begin revising on your laptops. You will have an additional week to continue revising before posting to Blackboard and WordPress. The due date for your literacy narrative is Wednesday, September 9, before class; the hard deadline is Friday, September 11, before class.
This morning in class, after your Scrabble debriefing, we will examine David Sedaris‘s essay “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” and you and two or three of your classmates will collaborate on an exercise that involves identifying an instance of tension in the essay. Locating such a moment in another writer’s work provides you with a model for creating tension in your own story, which is key to maintaining the reader’s interest and propelling the narrative forward.
Your group will also identify a minimum of three talking points in Sedaris’s essay. Those points may concern any parts of the narrative you have questions about or any passages that you deem particularly interesting or revealing. I will include those points in tomorrow’s class notes.
Sedaris rose to prominence in 1992 after National Public Radio broadcast his essay “Santaland Diaries,” which chronicles his stint as an elf at Macy’s flagship store in New York. That essay is included in his collection Holidays on Ice (1997). “Me Talk Pretty One Day” is the title essay in his 2000 collection, which you will have the opportunity to win in today’s class drawing.
Sedaris’s current reading tour includes a performance at Greensboro’s Tanger Center on October 28.
Scrabble Debriefings
Starting today, at the beginning of class on Mondays, I will return your Scrabble score sheets from Friday, and you and your group members will participate in a Scrabble debriefing in which you will (1) review and discuss your game, and (2) individually compose journal entries on the game. Questions to address include, but are not limited to, the ones on the handout that I will distribute this morning in class. Those questions for consideration are also listed below.
Did you learn any new words from your teammate or from your opponents? If so, what were they? If you did not look up their meanings after class and record them in your journal, look them up and record their meanings now.
What plays involved analyzing multiple options? Did your team opt not to make the highest-scoring play possible in order to either (1) block your opponent, or (2) keep letters that might enable you to score more points later?
Where did creative problem-solving figure in the game? If your team had a rack of all consonants or vowels–or mostly consonants or vowels–how were you able to advance the game by playing only one or two letters?
What was the largest number of words formed in a single play and what were they?
Scrabble, like writing, is a process of composing, only the board game involves composing smaller units, words rather than sentences and paragraphs. What parallels, if any, can you draw between your Scrabble play and your writing process?
You will have the opportunity to draw on the journal entries that you write during debriefings when you compose your midterm and final reflections for the course. If you choose Scrabble as the focus of your annotated bibliography and preface, you may incorporate portions of your Scrabble debriefings into that assignment as well.
Next Up
In class on Wednesday, you will begin drafting your first major writing assignment longhand. The assignment, a literacy narrative, is an account of a learning experience involving reading, writing, or learning to speak a language. As part of your prewriting process, look back at “Me Talk Pretty One Day” and consider how you might incorporate some of the same elements David Sedaris includes.
Section 1 (L-R): Bridgett Murphy, Oliver Henderson, Michael McNamara, Claire Jahnke
To help us put names with faces, I have included in this post pictures of all of you in sections one and eight 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
Section 1 (L-R): Kel Wadley, Grace Duffy, Hayden Porter, Sebastian Olander
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
Section 8 (L-R): Layla Rothberg, Ryan Lofton, Marisol Moreno
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 (course work) category. Completing a bonus assignment such as this one will offset a low class exercise or pop quiz grade.
How many students in English 1103.1 and 8 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 in each section may have playable last names as well.
Directions for Finding and Submitting Your Answer
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 Merriam Webster’s Scrabble Dictionary site. The spelling of the name must be identical to the spelling of the common noun. Homophones with different spellings don’t count.
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.
Post your comment as a reply to this blog post by 7:30 a.m. on Monday, August 24.
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, August 24.
Next Up
For class on Monday, you will read and annotate David Sedaris‘s essay “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” which I distribuded in class today. An additional copy is posted in the readings folder on Blackboard. We will examine Sedaris’s essay as a model for your own literacy narrative: a personal account of one of your experiences with reading, writing, or learning to speak a language. You will begin drafting your literacy narratives in class on Wednesday.
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.
Matters of Style
MLA (Modern Language Association) style, the standard format used for writing and documentation in the humanities, is the style that you will use for paper assignments in English 1103.
Formatting a paper in MLA style requires changing the font because Times New Roman, used in MLA papers, is not the default font in Microsoft Word. You will also need to create a running header that includes both your last name and the page number. If you do not know how to change a font or create a running header, this YouTube video on MLA page set-up will show you how.
For additional models of MLA style, see the sample essays posted on Blackboard and the MLA Style center’s sample essays, including this one by Holly Nelson, an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University.
Bonus Assignment
As practice in both revision and MLA formatting, complete the assignment below. Students who do so will earn a bonus assignment credit in the short assignments and participation category.
Directions
Revise the introductory reflective writing that you began in class on August 17. If your literacy narrative will focus on one of the classes that you wrote about in your reflection, do not include that class; the content of your bonus assignment should be markedly different from the content of your literacy narrative. You do not need to begin with a paragraph of summary followed by a paragraph of commentary. Those specifics were included in your reflective assignment so I could assess your understanding of the differences between the two and your ability to follow directions.
Compose a revision of at least two-hundred and fifty words, and type it into a Microsoft Word document that you have formatted to comply with MLA style. If you are unsure of how to change the formatting in a file, revisit the second paragraph of this blog post.
Print a copy of your file, and submit your paper copy at the beginning of class on Monday, August 24. You will not submit a copy online. Posting to Blackboard and WordPress is a requirement for your three major writing assignments only. However, if you want to publish your bonus assignment on your blog as practice in using WordPress, you are welcome to do so.
To mark the eve of the Bard of Avon’s birthday, April 23*, 1564, today’s Scrabble post–the last of the semester–features Shakespeare characters whose names are also playable common nouns.
Ariel: a gazelle found in Africa (Ariel, The Tempest, 1611-12)
Dogberry: the fruit of a dogwood tree (Dogberry, Much Ado about Nothing, 1598-1599)
Hamlet: a village (the title character of Hamlet, 1600-1601)
Lear: learning (the title character of King Lear, 1605-1606)
Puck: a disk used in ice hockey and other games (Puck, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1595-1596)
Romeo: a seductive lover, a male lover (one of the title characters in Romeo and Juliet, 1594-1595)
Shylock: to lend money with a high interest rate (Shylock, The Merchant of Venice, 1596-1597)
*The exact date of William Shakespeare’s birth is unknown, but church records show that he was baptized on April 26, and three days was the customary time to wait before baptizing a newborn. Shakespeare’s date of death is known, however. Coincidentally, he died at fifty-two on April 23, 1616, three years after his retirement.
Next Up
Although today’s class is your last for English 1103, I will post class notes tomorrow that include an end-of-semester checklist. Be sure to review that list for important details.
Coming Soon
You will complete your final assignment for the course, your individual oral presentation, during the exam period, which begins at 3:30 p.m. in the Hayworth Fellowship Hall on Monday, April 27. I look forward to seeing you then!
Today’s Scrabble post features the names of authors and characters that are playable words. Learning them will not only increase your word power (and up your game), but also broaden your knowledge of literature. If you haven’t read some of the classics in the list below, I encourage you to check them out.
Eyre: a long journey (the last name of of the title character in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, 1847)
Dickens: a devil (Charles Dickens, 1812-1870)
Fagin: a person, usually an adult, who instructs others, usually children, in crime (from a character of that type in Dickens’ Oliver Twist)
Holden: the past participle of hold (Holden Caulfield, the protagonist in J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye)
Huckleberry: a berry like a blueberry (the first name of the title character in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Hucklebery Finn, 1884)
Oedipal: describing libidinal feelings of a child toward the parent of the opposite sex (from the title character in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, c. 429 B.C.)
Quixote: a quixotic, or extremely idealistic person; also quixotry, a quixotic action or thought (the title character in Michael de Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Part I: 1605, Part II: 1615)
Could the words in the hypothetical game featured in the image at the top of this post be the first plays in an actual game of Scrabble? They couldn’t be the first two plays, but they could be the first three. Huckleberry with the b on the center square/double-word bonus square would be worth fifty-eight points, but huckleberry has eleven letters, and the first player, or team, could not play more than seven letters. But the first play could be berry for twenty-eight points. The second player, or team, could follow with q-u-i-x-o-t to the left of the e in berry for twenty-five points. Then the first player, or team, could add h-u-c-k-l-e to berry for a total of twenty-five points.
Next Up
Monday morning in class, you will have time to plan and prepare the individual presentation that you will deliver during the exam period, 3:30 p.m., Monday, April 27. In the meantime, think about the major assignments you have completed and the skills you have developed over the course of the semester. Review your blog posts, your reflective writing, and your journal entries, and ask yourself, what accomplishments of mine in English 1103 best demonstrate the skills and habits of mind that not only benefit me as a writer and a student, but also in my life beyond the classroom?
Keeping a u on your rack before the q is played is one way to decrease the chances that you will be left holding the q, a deduction of ten points. From the “Two-Letter Words, Q-Z” blog post, you know that qi (the central life force in Chinese culture) is one u-less option–and one that’s fairly easy to play since there are nine i’s in the game. Learning additional q words without u’s, such as the ones listed below, will increase your word power and provide you with more options for playing the q.
qabala(s): an esoteric method, discipline, and school of thought in Jewish mysticism. Also qabalah, cabala, and kabbalah.
qadi(s): an Islamic judge. Also cadi.
qaid(s): a Muslim tribal chief. Also caid.
qajak(s): a kayak.
qamutik(s): a sled drawn by dogs. Also komatik.
qanat(s): a system of underground tunnels and wells in the Middle East
qapik(s): a monetary subunit of the manat (Azerbaijan).
qat(s): a shrub
qawwali(s): a style of Muslim music
qi: the central life force in Chinese culture
qibla(s): the direction of the Kaaba shrine in Mecca toward which all Muslims turn in ritual prayer. Also qiblah, kibla, and kiblah
qigong(s): a Chinese system of physical exercises.
qindar, pl. dars or darka: a monetary unit of Albania. Also qintar(s).
qiviut: the wool of a musk ox.
qoph(s): the nineteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Also koph.
Next Up
Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, revisit the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website, and review the blog posts devoted to Scrabble tips, including this one.
Coming Soon
In class on Monday, you will read a designated classmate’s final essay and annotated bibliography, compose a handwritten response to it, and transcribe your feedback as a comment on the student’s WordPress blog. After your Scrabble debriefing, you will receive instructions for your peer response, and you will have the remainder of the class period to complete it.
As part of University Honors Day, High-PURCS, (High Point University Research and Creativity Symposium) will be held Tuesday, April 14, from 8-2 at the Nido and Mariana Qubein Conference Center. Attending High-PURCS and responding to some questions about the presentations offers you the opportunity to earn a bonus assignment credit. Look for details in tomorrow’s class notes.
Jane Lucas 