the words "em" and "en" mentioned in the subwords thread in the other group are very commonly played in scrabble

There is a recent book on "professional" Scrabble - I forget the author - in which it becomes clear that, at that level, it's more an exercise in symbol manipulation, and words are no longer important: what matters is has the better command of the finite list of data known as the Scrabble Dictionary. Some folk with no significant command of English do a well as any and better than most.

How disillusioning! What a sterile ending to the wonders of the language. (Anyway, whom are you going to believe, me or some strange dictionary?)