If you remember playing Scrabble back in the day when it seemed like a fun game, and you think that somewhere it took a turn in the wrong direction, perhaps you'll agree with Donald Sauter that this turn was actually the introduction of the OSPD into the game. He recommends using a good collegiate dictionary as the Official Dictionary.

(and if you've read Word Freak, by Stefan Fastis Fatsis, and just shook your head over how hopelessly fouled up competitive Scrabble has become, Sauter explains it all on his main Scrabble page.)

I never liked Scrabble. JFTR and stuff.

I was fascinated by those rules, tsuwm, though I've never been in a Scrabble club. I enjoy playing when I get the chance, but I don't like to play for points. To me, the 'point' is for all the tiles to be (legally) used. If they are, then everybody wins.

Scrabble is still nice to play, especially with young reading children. I noticed I absolutely could not do a crosswords in your language, nor scrabble I think, unless I would play every day. I took a list of answers to one crossword-thing and kept some words I could not find in dictionaries like:

getthepbout-arusale-zigs-lew-gostale-ete-castfealibi-eieio
That's it! (yes, of course I would like to know what they mean, if possible)

I always liked scrabble, though I have never been very good. I can play for points or for subjectively cool words. I'm happy either way, so long as the game is laid back.

Sometimes I can find laid back people to play - other times not.

On the sites, people accuse you of cheating, because you beat them. Other people complain vociferously, because you don't play the kind of game that they like to play. Most of the sites online have lounges for people who do not like to play for points, or an option for soliciting unrated games.


But that won't solve the dictionary problem. There is at least one site that offers multiple dictionaries, but I don't know that it has a 'very restricted' option. Even if it did, I don't know that it would help. There are people who hate the use of perfectly good words like 'theta' or 'phi', because they assert "nobody uses them." I had not considered the possibility of my ordinary conversations being so unusual.

On a slightly different subject, I played chess with a high school footballer once. He was a super nice guy and pretty smart, too. But he wasn't very good at chess. I kept taking his pieces and he was getting irritated. Finally he exclaimed something like, "When the masters play they don't just keep taking people's pieces!" I responded, "When the masters play, they don't give them away."

I long for the days when one could just play a game and everyone just acted like an adult.

for BranShea
eieio - Chorus of sorts from the children's song "Old McDonald Had a Farm, e-i-e-i-o"
zigs - turns sharply (half of zig zag)

the rest I have no clue.

Thanks Zed, so at least two of them I didn't schlepp home for nothing.
I love your closing lines, FallibleFiend.

he's got a million of them. he's here every Thursday.

Hey BranShea, You could start a new thread and post the clues too. Some of them may be slang expressions (get the ?peanutbutter? out), puns, words scrunched together (?go stale)or deliberate mondegreens but it is hard to say without the clues. (and now I am curious too)

Ooh! castfealibi has got to be "cast iron (Fe) alibi".

Go stale might be the answer to a clue something like 'what will happen to the bread if you leave it unwrapped'.

Oh! And if the fe was indeed iron, then getthepbout must be 'get the lead out'--a phrase that means hurry up. (Um--a cast iron alibi is one that is unbreakable.)

And--été often appears in crosswords here--I'm sure as a way to make the puzzle work.

Branny, was this a regular Xword or a cryptic crossword?

Often with a clue like "Nice season."

Thanks, Zed and Jackie. That leaves only arusale and lew, if indeed gostale = go stale. Clues like Faldage gives for été I do not have.
It was a regular Xwords, but when too difficult to solve,I wrote down the answers to the day-before's puzzle to see what I knew, could find and what not.(I understand now the clues are important too.)

Mondegreen (Zed) I looked up which proved to be an eponym.

Lew might be someone's name...

Lets maked Arusale someone's name too. Then it's over and done with. Oll Korrect? I learned some , thanks.

if there were elements abbreviated in other clues, I would think to look for them in these as well. what's ru, and can it be on sale?

what was the title/theme of the crossword, Bran?

even better, what are the clues to the ones we don't know for sure?

It's not all that important, just a daily crosswords in a local paper. There were abbrevations and those things ignore the capitals. So maybe it's a Russian ale or the name of the sister of Rapunzel.Or maybe this:

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source - Share This :
ARU Computers. audio response unit.

An audio response unite sale? But...it makes no matter.

Well--argon u sale doesn't work.
Confess I looked up Ru--it's ruthenium, which I can make no sense of in arusale. This one's the main reason I asked if it were a cryptic crossword; it could be usa in real, though I can't imagine much of a clue for that one.

of course it matters! it's a game, and we're playing together, and we're trying to puzzle out the answers. we have, in the past, done crosswords together. it's fun!

No not a cryptic Jackie, but this is a reversed crossword we're
doing. And UH? Mamma Mia! What a goof am I! I'm right now looking at my list here and I see that I made a typo. The real word is 'asarule'and even I can see that this means:
'as a rule'.
Oleh! laughs, ridicule, derisions, sardonic smiles, sardonic grins, irrision and scoffings >> ... YOU ARE WELCOME!
oops! Quick look in my originally posted list to see if I made this mistake from the start (be right back)


getthepbout-arusale-zigs-lew-gostale-ete-castfealibi-eieio

Yes! The original sin! A typo!

Sorry Jackie , for leading your search astray. I hope you came across some nice unexpected words.

I enjoy Scrabble at home with my wife. It's a good way to find some entertainment with the television off, for one thing. We're pretty well matched too, with the final score usually being very close. Playing Scrabble online seems pointless. We like box games in general, and for three or four people I recommend the game Settlers of Catan.

We're pretty well matched too, with the final score usually being very close
I also play very regularly with Dina, the scores vary a great deal, but I observed that in the long run , each of us has exactly 50 percent probability of winning.
And by the way, I don't consider "phi" and "kappa" as words, no more than "f" and "k"..

When I play Scrabble, it's all about forming interesting words. I'd rather turn old into wold for 10 points than place the Q of queen on a triple word tile.

Here's where the two aspects of the game become clear. Wordplay, on the one hand, and point-scoring on the other. Logophiles do not enjoy the game for the latter.

Of course 'f' and 'k' are not words. They are spelt 'ef' and 'kay'. We seldom see these letters spelled out like this, but I see phi and theta spelled out somewhere very frequently - a few times a week, perhaps more days than not. It's hard for me to believe they are so arcane.

Different people have different ways of playing. Some people only care for the points. But many point-scorers also love good words and love generating the open boards that would lead to interesting play. OTOH, there is a certain level of skill required to both win and generate an interesting board. It takes a lot of play and practice.

'ef' and 'kay' are allowable?? As to the other: at what point do Latin words become "foreign"?

You mean phi and theta are latin? Ay ay! My Greek nose!
(old family saying)

What words are allowable depends on which dictionary one uses. Players should always use a good reference when they play. In most cases, yes, 'ef' and 'kay' are allowable. It's important to understand that we are not talking about foreign words - that's a separate issue. We're referring instead to the English spelling of either Greek or English (or Hebrew, etc.) letters. In each case, they are English words.

So 'phi' and 'aleph', 'zeta' and 'beth', as well as 'ef' and 'kay' are all permissible (usually).

Greek !!! Squawk! I'll have to bring myself here a minute!

>What words are allowable depends on which dictionary one uses. Players should always use a good reference when they play.

that's the issue of my original post. if you use the OSPD, you'll be faced with accepting two-letter words such as AA AB AE AG AL BA BI DE ED ES ET FE HM JO KA KI MM MO NA NE OD OE OI OM OP OW OY QI UM UN XU YA and ZA. how many of these do you commonly use or see?

(I'll admit to having used aa*, ab(s), ag, bi, es [the letter], et (have you et yet?), jo*, mo, oi/oy, om, ow, um, and ya; but.)

*these can be found in the wwftd dictionary

Are exclamations allowed in your scrabble game, theFallblFeind?
Squawk ! (I hurry off to restore three typo's in my other posts, Jackie)

lots of interjections can be found in any usable dictionary: OSPD, collegiate dictionaries, etc.

-joe (egads) friday

First I'll have to look up interjection to see if it means what I think it means. Then I'll check the interjections. Benevolent--- -i-n-t-e-r-j-e-c-t-i-o-n (it does)

EGAD
Interjection
1. An exclamation expressing exultation or surprise, etc.

Source: Webster's

All of these are in the online dictionary I use for the game, but few in the (outdated) official scrabble dictionary I use at home. Also, they make a big deal about the fact that the Brits normally use a more extensive dictionary.

Then some of the Greek letters have a life of their own beyond their mere existence as Greek letters. Pi, phi, and theta come to mind.

Yip. Exactly. We don't even think of them as Greek letters, per se. We use them interchangeably with typewriter symbols; however, because they are not easy to type, we often write 'phi' instead of using "insert symbol" or "insert special character" or "alt-1000" (Φ). Of course we use pi to represent the ratio of Circumference to Diameter, which was known to the ancient Greeks to be constant. Phi is often used to mean the Golden Ratio, but more often an angle in 3D polar coordinates (along with theta).

As you're aware, though, the same can't be of Romance symbols that are used like this, though! When we talk about the speed of light (SOL) in a vacuum, we write 'c' and not 'cee.' We talk about 'm' (for mass) and not 'em'. In one sense, this is inconsistent. However, in the sense that we are attempting to conserve keystrokes, it's consistent.

The actual Greek letters aren't always readily available. Particularly if you are limited to a typewriter (as we were back in the good old days) you had to spell out the Greek letters with the roman alphabet.

My mom and I allow the OSPD in our friendly games. They are small enough you don't need a crane to lift them and, most importantly, it's house rules. If it ain't in there, you cain't use it. We have several editions and use all of them if necessary. Mom used to play with a neighbor that combed massive dictionaries and had a handwritten notebook of all the two and three letter combinations she called "words", saying "Well, they're in the dictionary." I trained my friend Ruby to play the friendly way as well. What I can't stand is someone agonizing for 15-20 minutes on every single play and then tightening up the board so you are lucky if you can find a spot for two or three letters. When Ruby gets in this mode, we have to play a couple of Speed Scrabbles without scoring, just to loosen things up, like my frustration levels
Edit 1 I forgot the P.
Edit 2 Ach! I forgot one of my favorite things...theme Scrabble. It's fun for the first word to set the theme. Naturally, there will be some plays that can't follow the theme, but it's the effort that counts.

You missed Ai - a three toed sloth. Is that not in that dictionary?

For me the point is to win the game and at the same time show how clever you are by making the most interesting, bizarre and disputed words on the way, making two three or four words at once with obscure two letter ones, and getting all your letters out in one go at least once during the game!

Me? competitive?? Not me!

Seriously, though, I'm not into competition scrabble and arguing over what dictionary is allowed, etc. I just play between friends and family, and we use whatever is on hand and/or whatever words players can convince us really are words.

On the issue of greek letters, they are allowed because they are used in English for symbols. I wouldn't normally allow the spelling of English letters because that is not standardised, and there is no reason to spell a letter. And is Zed allowed in the U.S. and Zee allowed in Britain? And is it ef or eff? el or ell? em or emm? en or enn? and how do you spell 'q'? kew? They are not really spellings, but phonetic representations of the sounds we make when we say the names of the letters. Z is really spelt Z.

Hmmm. I like playing Scrabble but rarely get a chance to.

Only once have I played with an overly-competitive person; who got up and flipped the whole board when I used a word he didn't know.

>You missed Ai - a three toed sloth. Is that not in that dictionary?

no, I mean yes it's there, but I omitted most of the interesting ones.

Part of the list of solfege "names" are listed as words....

.... why aren't the rest, which are (clearly) an integral part of the *language of solfege, included?

C Do
C-sharp Di
D-flat Ra
D Re
D-sharp Ri
E-flat Me
E Mi
F Fa
F-sharp Fi
G-flat Sa(l)
G So(l)
G-sharp Si(l)
A-flat Le
A La
A-sharp Li
B-flat Ta
B Ti

Qua?

those Scrabble™ folks are *nothing if not consistent.

-ron o.

musical notes (do re mi etc) are allowed aren't they?

My *thoughts were of all those lonely sharps and flats...