Two FFs Make a Right

It's probably intuitive that the two FFs play well with each other. That long F sound seems like a good way to end a short word. In fact, there are 4 three letter words, 35 four letter words, and 81 five letter words that have two Fs.

Warning: Scrabble nerd alert. The following information was derived by using an anagrammer and plugging the information into a spreadsheet.

• For four-letter words with two of the same consonant: FF?? ranks fourth with 35 anagrams. SS?? has 92, (the majority of which you would never use), LL?? has 67 anagrams, and TT?? has 48 anagrams.
• For five letter words: FF??? ranks 7th with 81 anagrams. SS??? wins with 518 anagrams, LL??? has 206, TT??? has 177, RR??? has 163, DD??? has 109, and NN??? has 108.

For Scrabble play, if you had to pick a double consonant combo to have, its probably the best outside of LL, SS, and TT as far how many short words use it. But unlike those other letters, F is worth more points and won't make a lot of bingos. You will want to play both FFs off together to clean up your rack.

If you had to think of any words with double FFs that you use in everyday conversation, you might get a handful off the top of your head: OFF, BUFF, CUFF, IFFY, MUFF, RIFF, PUFF. There at least 30 words four letters and less that you won't know. And for me, that's the crux of the matter. Most of these words are not common and require some Scrabble nerd style memorization. For example, look at the three letter words: AFF, EFF, IFF, and OFF. Of these, only OFF makes sense to the layman. But if you think that ?FF is all the vowels except for U, then they are easy to remember.

I'm trying to get a grasp on the 4 letter words, so this is what I came up with. I broke them into groups.

No vowel: One word. PFFT! That's easy.

Two vowels: FIEF and FIFE.

Then you deal with the front and back hooks of the three letter words:

?AFF: I remember front hooks by thinking BCD (the first 3 consonants in the alphabet) and then the word "GReeNWaY" (ignoring vowels). Remember the BCD, it comes in useful later. There are no back hooks, AFF is an adjective so no plural. The hooks look like this BCDGNRWY:AFF:

?EFF: Easy. T in the front and S on the back (it's a noun, the letter F, so it pluralizes). T:EFF:S

?IFF: My phrase for the front hooks is BaD JiM RoT. BDJMRT:IFF:Y The defintion of IFF is "If and only if" so I remember that the back hook is Y and only Y.

?OFF: Remember BCD from -AFF. It's back again along with the lone T from EFF. BCDT:OFF:S. OFF is a verb so it takes an S along with -ED, -ING. An alternate memory device is to remember that OFF is a brand of bug spray. DDT is a bug spray used a long time ago (BC is a long time ago).

Then there is ?UFF. BCD is there again. Or try this phrase (ignoring vowels): "BiG CaT DouGH LuMP RaT" As in the "a big cat saw a lump in the dough and it was a rat." That would make you say UFF*!

Also remember that every single one of the four letter words ending in -FF takes an S. From BAFF to TUFF. All of them.

These memory devices are useful when you are first learning words. Hopefully, over time, you will start to recognize the words in their own light.