Category: Scrabble

During our Friday Wordplay Days, some of you have asked whether names of places are playable Scrabble words. If the place name is also a common noun, the answer is yes. The term for such a word is toponym. The list that follows includes toponyms in the first half of the alphabet. Learning these words will broaden your vocabulary and up your game.

• afghan: a wool blanket
• alamo: a cottonwood poplar tree
• alaska: a heavy fabric
• berlin: a type of heavy fabric
• bermudas: a variety of knee-length, wide-legged shorts
• bohemia: a community of unconventional, usually artistic, people
• bolivia: a soft fabric
• bordeaux: a wine from the Bordeaux region
• boston: a card game similar to whist
• brazil: a type of tree found in Brazil used to make instrument bows (also brasil)
• brit: a non-adult herring
• cayman: a type of crocodile, also known as a spectacled crocodile (also caiman)
• celt: a type of axe used during the New Stone Age
• chile: a spicy pepper (also chili)
• colorado: used to decsribe cigars of medium strength and color
• congo: an eellike amphibian
• cyprus: a thin fabric
• dutch: referring to each pperson paying for him or herself
• egyptian: a sans serif typeface
• english: to cause a ball to spin
• french: to slice food thinly
• gambia: a flowering plant known as cat’s claw (also gambier, which is a small town in Ohio)
• geneva: gin, or a liquor like gin
• genoa: a type of jib (a triangular sail), also known as a jenny, first used by a Swedish sailor in Genoa
• german: also known as the german cotillon, an elaborate nineteenth-century dance
• greek: something not understood
• guinea: a type of British coin minted from 1663 to 1813
• holland: a linen fabric
• japan: to gloss with black lacquer
• java: coffee
• jordan: a chamber pot
• kashmir: cashmere
• mecca: a destination for many people

Next Up

Wordplay Day! To up your game and increase your word power, review the tips and tools on the Scrabble website as well as this blog post of toponyms and my other posts devoted to the game.

Last week I published a blog post that listed the first twenty-two playable four-letter words with three vowels. Knowing those words, and others with multiple vowels, proves useful when you’re faced with a rack of mostly, or all, vowels. Here’s a list of the remaining fourteen playable four-letter words with three vowels:

• naoi: ancient temples (pl. of naos)
• obia: form of sorcery practiced in the Caribbean (also obeah)
• odea: concert halls (pl. of odeum)
• ogee: an S-shaped molding
• ohia: a Polynesian tree with bright flowers (also lehua)
• olea: corrosive solutions (pl. of oleum)
• olio: a miscellaneous collection
• ouzo: a Turkish anise-flavored liquor
• raia: a non-Muslim Turk (also rayah)
• roue: a lecherous old man
• toea: a currency in Papua, New Guinea
• unai: a two-toed sloth (pl. unai; an ai is a three-toed sloth)
• zoea: the larvae of some crustaceans

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Next Up

Spring Break! Enjoy your week away from class!

Knowing words with multiple vowels proves useful when you’re faced with a rack of mostly, or all, vowels. Here’s a list of the first twenty-two playable four-letter words with three vowels:

• aeon: a long period of time (also eon)
• agee: to one side (also ajee)
• agio: a surcharge applied when exchanging currency
• ague: a sickness associated with malaria
• ajee: to one side (also agee)
• akee: a tropical tree
• alae: wings (pl. of ala)
• alee: on the side shielded from wind
• amia: a freshwater fish
• amoa: a kind of small buffalo
• awee: a little while
• eaux: waters (pl. of eau)
• eide: distinctive appearances of things (pl. of eidos)
• emeu: an emu
• etui: an ornamental case
• euro: an Australian marsupial, also known as wallaroo, for being like the kangaroo and the wallaby; also a unified currency of much of Europe
• ilea: the terminal portions of small intestines (pl. of ileum)
• ilia: pelvic bones (pl. of ilium)
• jiao: a Chinese currency (also chiao)
• luau: a large Hawaiian feast
• meou: to meow
• moue: a pouting expression

Next Up

Today marks your seventh Wordplay Day of the semester. To up your game and increase your word power, review the tips and tools on the Scrabble website as well as this blog post and my other posts devoted to the game.

Coming Soon

In class on Monday you will read one of your classmate’s analyses and compose a response that addresses one of the nine basic writing errors or identifies one of the well-written sentences in the essay. Remember to bring Writing Analytically to Class.

Playable all-consonant words include these:

• brr: used to indicate that one is cold
• crwth: an ancient stringed instrument (pl. -s)
• cwm: a cirque (a deep, steepwalled basin on a mountain, pl. -s, prounounced to rhyme with “boom”)
• hm: used to express thoughtful consideration (also “hmm“)
• mm: used to express assent or satisfaction
• nth: describing an unspecified number in a series
• phpht: used as an expression of mild anger or annoyance (also “pht“)
• psst: used to attract someone’s attention
• sh: used to urge silence (also “shh” and “sha“)
• tsk: to utter an exclamation of annoyance (-ed, -ing, -s)
• tsktsk: to “tsk” (-ed, -ing, -s)

Learning these words will enable you to continue the game when you’re faced with a rack without vowels.

Next Up

Friday marks your sixth Wordplay Day of the semester. To up your game and increase your word power, review the tips and tools on the Scrabble website as well as my blog posts devoted to the game.

Today’s blog post is the final installment in the series of posts devoted to playable two-letter words. Learning these two-letter words, as well as the others in the alphabet, will enable you to see more options for play and increase the number of points you earn in a single turn.

• qi: the central life force in Chinese culture (also ki)
• re: a tone of the diatonic scale
• sh: used to encourage silence
• si: a tone of the diatonic scale (also ti)
• so: a tone of the diatonic scale (also sol)
• ta: an expression of thanks
• ti: a tone of the diatonic scale
• to: in the direction of
• uh: used to express hesitation
• um: used to express hesitation
• un: one
• up: to raise (-s, -ped, -ping)
• us: a plural pronoun
• ut: the musical tone C in the French solmization system, now replaced by do
• we: a first-person plural pronoun
• wo: woe
• xi: a Greek letter
• xu: a former monetary unit of Vietnam equal to one-hundreth of a dong (also sau pl. xu)
• ya: you
• ye: you
• yo: an expression used to attract attention
• za: pizza

Next Up

Friday marks your fifth Wordplay Day of the semester. To up your game and increase your word power, review the tips and tools on the Scrabble website as well as my blog posts devoted to the game.

Coming Soon

At the beginning of class on Monday, I will collect your fifth and final Check, Please! worksheets. If you were absent yetserday when I distributed copies or you misplaced yours, you can download a copy from Blackboard.

On Monday we will also examine my sample Check, Please! assignments and read the short story “The School” by Donald Bartheleme, which will offer you an additional option for your analysis.

In the past three weeks, I published blog posts featuring the playable two-letter words that begin with a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, and 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 others 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
• 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
• pa: a father
• pe: a Hebrew letter
• pi: a Greek letter

Next Up

Friday marks your fourth Wordplay Day of the semester. To up your game and increase your word power, review the tips and tools on the Scrabble website as well as my blog posts devoted to the game.

Coming Soon

At the beginning of class on Monday, February 6, I will collect the worksheets for your fourth Check, Please! assignment. If you were absent last Wednesday or misplaced the copy you recieved in class, you can download a copy from Blackboard.

In the past two weeks, I published one blog post featuring the playable two-letter words that begin with a and a second blog post featuring the playable two-letter words that start with b, c, d, and e. Today’ s blog post features the playable two-letter words beginning with f, g, h, i, j, k, and l. Learning these two-letter words, as well as the others in the alphabet, will enable you to see more options for play and increase the number of points you earn in a single turn.

• fa: a tone on the diatonic scale
• fe: a Hebrew letter
• 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

Coming Soon

At the beginning of class on Monday, January 30, I will collect the worksheets for your third Check, Please! assignment. If you were absent last Wednesday or misplaced the copy you recieved in class, you can download a copy from Blackboard.

Last Tuesday, January 17, I published a blog post with your pictures and a list of playable first names. At the end of the post, I offered a bonus-point opportunity in the form of questions: How many of your classmates have playable first or last names, and who are they? Three students posted their answers as comments on the post, and those three students will receive a bonus point for their literacy narratives

Here are the answers to the questions:

• brock: a badger (Brock West)
• charlie: a fool (Charlie Milch)
• conner: one who cons or deceives (Conner Horn)
• horn: hard permanent growths on the heads of cattle, sheep, goats, etc. (Conner Horn)
• milch: giving milk (Charlie Milch)
• nick: to cut (Nick Ewing)
• rice: swamp grass cultivated as a type of food (Nicole Rice)
• spencer: a short jacket worn in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (Spencer Lawe)
• west: the direction to the point of the horizon where the sun sets at the equinoxes, on the left side of a person facing north, or the part of the horizon lying in that direction (Brock West)

Continue to review the January 17 blog post as a way of putting names with faces, and continue to review all of the Scrabble posts to increase your word power and up your game.

The January 12 Scrabble blog post featured the sixteen 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 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: 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

Next Up

At the beginning of class on Monday, I will collect your completed worksheets for Lesson Two in the Check, Please! course. If you were absent from class on Wednesday, January 18, when I distributed the worksheet, you can download and print a copy from Blackboard.

Also, in class on Monday, we will review your collaborative writing on the habits of mind and examine David Sedaris’s essay “Me Talk Pretty One Day” as a model for your literacy narrative. As we read Sedaris’s essay, consider his use of description and development and think about ways you can employ those strategies in your own narrative.

• Al: a type of East Indian tree
• Alan: a breed of hunting dog (also aland, alant)
• Alec: a herring
• Ana: a collection of miscellany about a specific topic
• Anna: a former Indian coin
• 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
• 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
• Chevy: to chase (also chivy)
• Christie: a type of turn in skiing (also christy)

• Clarence: an enclosed carriage
• Conner: one who cons or deceives
• Dagwood: a large, stuffed sandwich (named after the comic strip character who was fond of them)
• Daphne: a flowering shrub with poisonous berries
• Davy: a safety lamp
• Deb: a debutante
• Devon: a breed of cattle
• Dexter: located to the right
• 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
• Fay: to join together closely
• Florence: a former European gold coin
• Franklin: a nonnoble medieval English landowner
• Fritz: a nonworking or semi-functioning state
• 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
• Hansel: to gift a gift, usually to commence a new year (also handsel)
• Harry: to harass
• Henry: a unit of electrical inductance
• Herby: full of herbs
• Hunter: a person or animal that hunts
• 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
• 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
• Mac: a raincoat
• Mae: more
• Mamie: a tropical fruit-bearing tree (also mamey and mammee)
• Marc: the pulpy residue of fruit after it is pressed for wine

• 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
• 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
• Willy: to clean fibers with a certain machine

Bonus Point Opportunity!

The first student to correctly respond to the playable first names and last names question below will earn a bonus point for his/her/their first major writing assignment.

How many students in English 1103. 23 have a first or last that is a playable Scrabble word?

Directions for Finding and Submitting Your Answer

1. Review the list of playable first names, compare it with the students’ first and last names on the class page, and determine which of the students’ first and last names are playable in Scrabble.
2. Compose a response of one or more complete sentences that includes (1) the number of students with playable names, and (2) the first and last name of each student.
3. Post your comment as a reply to this blog post.
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!