WAU*
Readers of this here Scrabble blog probably already know that WAUGH is a good word. Did you know it didn't take an S? Did you know that it does take a T?
I just was looking over a list of four letter W words when I noticed three useful ones: WAUL, WAUK, and WAUR.
Why do I think they are useful?
Well, I was looking at a list of tiles arranged according to usefulness (if perfect word knowledge is assumed). So the list given in Everything Scrabble looks like this: ?SEXZRAHNCDMTIJKLPOYFBGWUVQ. Thus the blank (?) is the most useful while Q is the least useful. I figure that in my quest to learn all of the four letter words, maybe it would be a good idea to learn them going backwards on this list, since short words are good for rack management.
I already know all the four letter Q words, so next I worked on the V words. I skipped U because its a vowel and there are bunches of them (but I'll get to them in a bit, because I hate U). So I went to W. If you look on the list then you will see that WAUL, WAUK, and WAUR all use W and U, two very unuseful letters.
In fact, the awkwardness of the UW combo is often pointed out in analyses of expert games. UV is another bad combo, but a letter that can bail you out is G, for GUV, VUG, VUGG, VUGH, VUGGY, etc. The bail out letter for UW must be A. Although there aren't any three letter words that have AUW (WUD is the only one with UW in it), there are three four letter words.
Anyway, here is the list of words starting with WAU- in the OSPD (less than 8 letters).
WAUCHT v -ED, -ING, -S to waught
WAUGH adj damp
WAUGHT v -ED, -ING, -S to drink deeply
WAUK v -ED, -ING, -S to wake
WAUL v -ED, -ING, -S to cry like a cat
WAUR adj worse
Five letter words with AUW include AWFUL, SQUAW, WAMUS, WAUGH, WAUKS, WAULS, WHAUP.
Interesting. Learning the fours seems like a daunting task. I'm having trouble with the three's, how did you learn them? Also I noticed you had analysed a game and had used software to give advice - which software does this? My middle name is a bingo - I hope to play it some day.
Oh, you've probably already seen this, but here it is anyway: http://www.homestead.com/scrabblecentral/files/birds.txt
I can't say that I learned all of the threes, although I think I have them about 90%. I found the easiest way was to take a letter and make a list that either began with the letter or contained it. Then to study that list. I also would use the Lexpert "quiz build" option to find all of the threes in randomly generated racks. But mostly I think I picked them up over time by playing better players.
I've started on the fours, but so far only those that use letters that I hate (UVW).
If a computer analysed my game, then it was probably the computer examine from the ISC. If you pay the $20 membership fee, then you can go back over your games, and ask the computer what it would have played in certain positions. That helps me a lot; I see some hot spots that I missed and I learn a lot of new words.
Oh, and thanks for the link to the bird list. I hadn't seen that before. I was about to generate one myself. I'm glad someone else did it before me, because I'm basically lazy.