REDTAIL

Notch another one for my ISC birdwatching life list.

REDTAIL n pl. -S a type of hawk

My opponent took the lead for good on this one. Oh, how I wish I had played it. I was doing pretty well, but after this play I couldn't find my footing. Come to find out, HEMIN or HEMAL at M9 for 38 would have been a good response, but the computer suggests HIEMAL and HAEMIN as even better (40 points). The best I came up was AH at N13 for 22, which was doubly bad because it closed down some bingo lanes.

My Flashcards

I'm playing a tournament this weekend in New Orleans so my Scrabble study is really kicking into high gear right now.

When I study Scrabble, the people I'm around give me the strangest looks, especially when I'm working with my flashcards. They get even more perplexed when they look at them and realize how much effort I had put into making them. I thought you might like to look at them, so I took some pictures of them.

As always, click on the thumbnail for a larger view.

These were my first flashcards. They are the most common 6-to-make-7 stems: TISANE, SATIRE, RETAIN, EASTER and just for fun, IRONED. I wrote the stem with the letter on one side of the card, and the answers were on the back. I used a black Sharpie. One puzzle per card. Each stem has a different color card. TISANE is on yellow; SATIRE on orange. I think the colors help me remember.

During the fall I would take them on my work breaks and study them in the park near my library. I even tried to study the same words in the same places, so that now when I think of certain words, I associate them with a particular place in the park.

This was my second set of cards. I found a list of all the four and five letter words that have either a J, Q, X, or Z in them. I crossed out all the words that I knew already. I wrote the alphagrams in pen on one side of the card and the answers on the back. Each card has four or five puzzles.

I think of all the studying I've done, this set of cards improved my game the best.

It's my biggest stack of cards. My hand cramped up horribly when I made these. So it was clear that I was going to need a little help. That's when I downloaded LeXpert.

With LeXpert I found a list of the 1000 most probable words. Out of these, I found those that have only one anagram. I call them singletons. I then had a list of 373. I printed out the lists and then cut them out in groups of ten and glued them onto the cards with a gluestick. But I found that the paper separated from the card so I had to go back over them with invisible tape. Later I numbered the cards so that I could study them in order. These were easy to format because there is only one answer per alphagram. Just recently I added the one letters hooks for them, which I should have done before I printed the list out.

These are the cards I have worked with the most lately. I'm pretty sure I've got them about 90%, which is my goal. I usually study them when I take a bubble bath. (Please don't try to make a mental image of that).

So in order to avoid the problems I had with the glue stick and the tape and whatnot, I had the brilliant idea of getting some mailing labels. The only problems was trying to get LeXpert to print on the labels correctly. It probably took over a half hour just to find the right formatting. But after that, it was a cinch. The main problem with these cards is that I lumped all the stems together into one list and arranged them by probability. So they are not very coherent.

I have yet to really work with these cards. But I did play SENORITA a while back.

I made some like this that had 6 to make 7 letter stems, but I accidentally washed them.

This is the future of my flashcard study: my Palm. I figured out the formatting so that I use the page down to flip between alphagrams and answers. The only problem is that I couldn't get LeXpert to generate this kind of list, so I had to type it all out manually. I got the lists from Metagram. I guess it is still better than writing it out by hand.

I've got 15 documents of 6 to make 7 letter stems: ALIENS, ENTERS, INSERT, LADIES, NAILER, RAINED, RETAIL, SERIAL, SIGNAL, SINGER, STERNA, STONER, TOESIN*, TRAINS, and TUNERS. The first page has the ananomic (ex. STONER=BINGER FEASTED ON MUCH POT), and the puzzles follow. Perhaps later I can post the documents for download.

The advantage is that its more discreet than my flashcards. I can do it in public and not get funny looks. I can also study with the lights off, so I can do them in bed at night without bothering my wife. The main disadvantage is that I can't study in my bubble bath for fear of dropping the Palm in the water.

Flower Power

My wife and I have caught the gardening bug, and so I took a couple days off of work so that we could totally relandscape our yard. We went to a huge nursery today and I was totally blown away. There were so many new words--bunches and bunches of flowers with names that are 7 and 8 letter words!

Luckily I had my Palm Pilot with me, so I could check the word judge. While we were browsing the selection I'd go "Wow! NANDINA is good!". As we passed by a dizzying array of azaleas I'd mention to my wife that AZALEAS has a funny looking alphagram: AAAELSZ. "The three As make it weird." "What if I get to play YAUPONS at the tournament this weekend. Wouldn't that be cool!" Eventually I had to put my Palm away and start concentrating on the plants' landscaping uses, so as not to totally annoy my wife.

I started The Elusive QUETZAL with a bird theme, because I found that there were a lot of bird names that were also bingos. But it may be that there are more plant names that are bingos.

One thing that I did realize is that there were a lot of plant names that were NOT acceptable. Perhaps that is due to the fact many plant names are regional, and so have a harder time making it into the dictionary. Or perhaps the Latin word hasn't made it into "common" usage.

Here's a brief (and by no means complete) list of cool plant names that I found are playable in the TWL:

AZALEA(S)
BOXWOOD(S)
CAMELIA(S) or CAMELLIA(S)
FOXGLOVE(S)
JUNIPER(S)
LANTANA(S)
LOBELIA(S)
NANDINA(S)
SALVIA(S)
SEDUM(S)
VERBENA(S)
YAUPON(S)
ZINNIA(S)

UPDATE:BEGONIA(S) and PHLOX(ES) are good words too.

Short List: ?AUGH

I was happy when I learned that WAUGH was playable. These are also good:

FAUGH interj--used to express disgust
HAUGH n pl. -S a low-lying meadow
LAUGH v -ED, -ING, -S to express emotion, typically mirth, by a series of inarticulate sounds
SAUGH n pl. -S a willow tree SAUGHY adj
WAUGH adj damp

Anagramming Fun

Although it doesn't use TWL, I often like to play Text Twist, which is offered at Yahoo games. I figure any anagramming is better than no anagramming. You have to find all of the 3-6 letter words in a six letter jumble in 2 minutes. If you get the full six letter word, then you can move on to the next word. Not too hard. Good practice.

For a more serious anagramming work out, nothing beats Jumbletime. It is totally TWL compliant. The Daily Challenge gives you 45 jumbles to unscramble. You can choose to do the four letter words through 7 and 8 letter words. It's quite a challenge, and I've never come close to doing them all in the time allotted. When it shows your score, it also shows the high scores for the day. Once in a while I'll see G.I. Joel up there. I'm in the midst of celebrity.

Another good workout out is to quiz the build option on LeXpert. I usually set it so I don't have to guess the two letter words. Since I'm concentrating on the threes and fours, I only have the big word be five letters. I've even gotten my wife to join in on this.

Inspiration on the Way

I've gone ahead and ordered Scrabylon on DVD. I will use it as an inpirational tool before the New Orleans tournament.

After I watch it, I will be sure to post a review here on the QUETZAL.

Short List: A?EE

AGEE
AJEE
AKEE
ALEE
AWEE

Only one of these words will take an S at the end. Which is it?

AKEES is good, because it is the only one that is a noun. The rest of them are adverbs; they don't have any back hooks.

Here's the same list with definitions:

AGEE adv to one side
AJEE adv agee
AKEE n pl. -S a tropical tree
ALEE adv toward the side of a vessel sheltered from the wind
AWEE adv awhile

Losing Streak

Aarrgh! Yesterday, I lost the last four of my ISC games, and five of my last six. My rating plummeted from 1385 to 1297.

In one game in particular I had a complete mental logjam. I ran out of time. I felt like I was struggling up the slippery side of a sand dune, only to discover that I was inside of an hourglass, slipping, falling. It was like writer's block, only for anagramming. Is there such thing as anagrammer's block?

I bit of it had to do with frustration on my part. I'm reminded of the scenes from Word Wars, when Marlon Hill, or Matt Graham, or Joe Edley feel like they are forced to expain why they are on a losing streak. Joe Edley would blame it on his chi while Matt would say that he needed to take more vitamins. But mostly they would say that they were not thinking clearly because emotionally they were frustrated.

Well, today's another day and my frustration has subsided. I start with a clean slate.

Update: I lost two more games. I was ahead in both games. But I lost them both when my opponent played a bingo in the last couple hands. Ouch! My last opponent even thanked me for providing the opening.

My rating is at 1270.

Bird Word: TROGONS

Today's bird word of the day is:

TROGON n pl. -S a tropical bird

Actually, if I'm not mistaken, the quetzal is a type of trogon, or at least closely related. The trogons are probably among the most beautiful of tropical birds. I saw some when I went to Costa Rica several years ago.

New Plumage for QUETZAL

I've been messing around with the style sheets for the Quetzal here. I thought it was too green. I found a pretty background from Squidfingers. I also got some major help from QUETZAL tech support, who is the master of style.

I might move some furniture around and freshen up the air too.

UGH, I never URD of that WUD

I've been busy revamping my blogging software, so I've been a little out of touch with my Scrabble.

But on my kitchen cupboard I taped a list of three letter words that contain a U . My hope is to absorb them in small but frequent doses. The phrase "UGH, I never URD of that WUD" helps me remember three of these words, words that I have hardly used before.

I singled out the U words because, quite frankly, out of all the vowels, I despise the Us the most (unless I have the Q, of course). A lot of these short words could make good letter dumps. I can't tell you how many times I've played VUG or GUV (V is my least favorite letter of all).

And if you got VUG down, then learn VUGG, VUGH, and VUGS along with VUGGS, VUGHS and VUGGY.

Three letter words with U:

AMU, AUK

BUB, BUD, BUG, BUM, BUN, BUR, BUS, BUT, BUY

CUB, CUD, CUE, CUM, CUP, CUR, CUT

DUB, DUD, DUE, DUG, DUI, DUN, DUO, DUP

EAU, ECU, EMU

FEU, FLU, FOU, FUB, FUD, FUG, FUN, FUR

GNU, GUL, GUM, GUN, GUT, GUV, GUY

HUB, HUE, HUG, HUH, HUM, HUN, HUP, HUT

JEU, JUG, JUN, JUS, JUT

KUE

LEU, LUG, LUM, LUV, LUX

MUD, MUG, MUM, MUN, MUS, MUT

NUB, NUN, NUS, NUT

OUD, OUR, OUT

PIU, PUB, PUD, PUG, PUL, PUN, PUP, PUR, PUS, PUT

QUA

RUB, RUE, RUG, RUM, RUN, RUT

SAU, SOU, SUB, SUE, SUM, SUN, SUP, SUQ

TAU, TUB, TUG, TUI, TUN, TUP, TUT, TUX

UDO, UGH, UKE, ULU, UMM, UMP, UNS, UPO, UPS, URB, URD, URN, USE, UTA, UTS

VAU, VUG

WUD

YOU, YUK, YUM, YUP