Blogs May 2020 to Aug 2020

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MONDAY
8/31/2020
AM I TOO OLD TO BEGIN PLAYING SCRABBLE?
What do you think? Your answer is probably true.
Most often, YOU will experience that which YOU believe. The answer is whether or not you have the DESIRE and the WILL to play. It also depends on HOW you want to play the game.
Some people go for a walk. Some people shuffle along from the front door to the mailbox and back, then sit down in exhaustion. Other people hike the length of the Appalachian Trail, then make plans for their next adventure.

Please state your question again.
The truth is… there’s a question within the question. How do you approach life?

We all have our own passions. Some people marvel at my string of blogs by telling me that they can’t imagine themselves being so persistent and driven. I listen but don’t quite get it. I have always appreciated and created marathon-like projects including two 24-hour / 24-game scrabble tournaments.
And yet I can’t imagine participating in a 24-hour readathon, tuna-fish eating feast, or sky-diving marathon. We all pick our poison.
I guess I’ve been on a scrabble marathon since I first stumbled across club-style scrabble in the late 1980s. While I have played thousands upon thousands of games, I know many other scrabble enthusiasts who have played many more games than me.

  • No matter how far you may walk, there are most likely others who have walked farther.
  • No matter how much money you can acquire, there are most likely others who have amassed more money than you.
  • No matter how many words you have stored in your memory, there are more likely others who know more.

If you want to begin any new endeavor, and you have a passion, Just Do It.

YES, YOU CAN. EXPRESS YOURSELF.

Scrabble is a trademark

SUNDAY
8/30/2020
‘Z’ IS FOR ZYZZYVA
Zyzzyva is the last official word on the Official Word List with the exception of ‘ZZZ’ which nobody will ever play.
ZYZZYVA is a tropical weevil, but it is also the name of an anagramming program that is owned and controlled by NASPA. It was created by Michael Thelen, a competitive scrabble player. It is used as a ‘Word Judge’ tool and it can be manipulated to find and print endless lists from its lexicon.
As soon as NASPA aquired it, their powers that be altered the program, limiting the length of any list one can print to the first 200 words on the list. Obviously NASPA can do that because they own it, but how petty. It’s not like NASPA sells lists to the public; it’s a control issue.
Over the last many years I used the ZYZZYVA program to ferret out countless word lists, altering the lists and adding my personal touch, placing the words on WHIZ CARD, bookmarks, T-Shirts, and more. My all-time favorite creation is an item I call a NAME PLAQUE. It includes a person’s name, framed, with a list of many of the highest-scoring ‘legal’ scrabble words made up from only the letters from that person’s name. (see below)
It makes a great gift. Scrabble players enjoy having it displayed on their desk or table at home. One hangs on the wall in many offices. I’ve created them as baby gifts for new-borns, birthday gifts for word-lovers, and I’ve presented them to celebrities, athletes, and presidents.

I sell it for $30 including shh. Send your order via Paypal to the account of JFTSOI.MOSS@gmail.com. Send me an email to the same address with the full name of the recipient (include a middle name). The variation in the letters, the more expansive the list. The plaque will feature 60-75 words and I’ll also include the entire list from 2 – 16 letters long.

 


SATURDAY
8/29/2020
‘Y’ IS FOR YEARLONG
Being a WANNABE and THE REAL THING is as different as a proboscis monkey and a trumpeter swan. The WANNABE will quickly confront his/her resolve put to the test when it becomes apparent that the effort will not be a simple, quick infusion of a few facts but rather a YEARLONG (or longer) process. It is not like a walk around the block; it’s more like an extended hike along the Appalachian Trail or a series of consecutive marathons.

You can either become a ‘player’ or you can become a ‘PLAYER’; choose one.

It is basically impossible to do it all at one time. You can’t do it in one lesson. You can’t do it in one month. You can’t do it in one season. You can’t even do it completely in one year. Learning to be a scrabble threat is a process.

  • Take a bite.
  • Chew it well.
  • Swallow (don’t choke on things like CRWTH, USUFRUCT, or INUKSHUK.
  • Digest and remember the taste.
  • Take another bite but don’t forget the last bite.

The process of learning to be one of the best scrabble players is sorta like eating an elephant. Keep a bottle of Pepto close by. Stay in the mix for the long haul. Don’t choke on the tusks.

 

Scrabble is a trademark

 


FRIDAY
8/28/2020
‘X’ IS FOR . . . MOMENTUM
While the few pages on the Official Word List that does indeed begin with the letter ‘X,’ I couldn’t find one to meet my purpose here.
However, ‘X’ is a very valuable tool in learning and should never be overlooked.
If you are or ever have been a fan of TIME MANAGEMENT and EFFICIENCY then you may recall the value of list-making. I’m not referring to category lists at this point. I’m pointing at ‘TO DO LISTS’ and ‘MANAGEMENT TOOLS’.
The way it works begins with constructing a list in some logical order of the steps important to achieve your goal. Be as specific as possible. Then when you’ve completed a task from the list use a large, dark marker and put a big ‘X’ across the completion.
EXING OUT completions is known to have provided the doer with a new spurt of energy. I’ve experienced the phenomenon on several occasions.

Use the ‘X’ to push you forward to the next event.


THURSDAY
8/27/2020
‘W’ IS FOR WANNABE
I meet wannabes all the time. The truth is that being a wannabe is one step toward becoming one of the in-crowd. BUT desire and wishing alone doesn’t get the job done. Being a wannabe is the stage in which people are expressing their preferences before taking any action.
If the wannabe is sincere you’ll see the proof in their next step, doing something.

So, what exactly might a wannabe do?

Approach a scrabble club director or communicate with a leader from one of the scrabble associations expressing his/her desire to be more involved in the game.

  • Obtain an Official Scrabble Word List and investigate the width and breadth of Scrabble jargon.
  • Locate and attend a local scrabble club to observe and play the game with players ‘in the know’.
  • Ask questions of people who may have the answers.
  • Learning ‘How To Play Scrabble’ is similar to learning any other skill which may be new to you.

#1 YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW.

I have a MAC computer. I wanted to learn how to make fliers on the computer using a program which came with the computer called ‘PAGES’. At the time, the APPLE STORE offered a free session at their locations to tutor and instruct users like me.
I sat by myself at home and built a flier on my MAC. Simultaneously I kept a notebook in which I wrote a lengthy list of questions whenever I got stuck. When I couldn’t figure out HOW TO:
X make columns
X justify paragraphs
X create shapes and colors
X etc.

I enrolled myself in the Apple tutorial program where I was assigned an appointment to work with a specific ‘CREATIVE’. I showed up to the appointment with my MAC in tow along with my notebook. When he asked me how he could help, I showed him my attempt at a flier, I asked all the questions I had written in my notebook, and when I had exhausted my list I asked, “What have I overlooked asking where you can advise me with my project and my efficiency?” That question led to another half-dozen sessions with my creative, Mike. When we completed the series of sessions I was pretty good and knew about all the other things I still didn’t know, but still wanted to learn.
When I meet a WANNABE I try my best to get them to ask me the question that ignites me to tell them about all the things they DON’T KNOW THAT THEY DON’T KNOW. The rest becomes simple, NOT EASY, but simple.

 


WEDNESDAY
8/26/2020
‘V’ IS FOR VARIETY
If you do the same thing over and over again with the expectation and hope of producing a certain result . . . and the result does not occur, you have to change something in the mix. Otherwise, your plan may lead to insanity.
If you keep studying the same skill, hoping and expecting to rise in the ranks of scrabble players . . . and your ranking remains static or drops, you need to choose a different path and strategy.
In order to keep myself plugged into a mindset consistent with the top tier of scrabble players, I employ studying a wide VARIETY of related topics, lists, and strategies.
It is easy to fall into the trap of becoming too comfortable studying and reviewing a single skill, becoming so good at it that you become mesmerized by your own success, convincing yourself that you don’t strive to go any further.
I experienced that myself when I first learned about STEMS and I mastered the SATINE STEM.
I was so proud of my own accomplishment that I always began my study regiment by review SATINE. I became a terror in the game if and when I found SATINE on my rack. But I became ‘STUCK’ due to my own success. I was so excited about my achievement that I developed a fear of taking the next step and dealing with the challenges ahead of me that came along with new struggles.

LEARNING is all about taking on the NEXT CHALLENGE and assimilating the new information into your arsenal.

For me, a VARIETY of topics on my study list helps me avoid stale boredom, and infuses a wide group of words, ideas, and methods to tackle the big picture of the entire spectrum of the game. Some of the steps I learned to take included but were not limited to

  1. STUDY A DIFFERENT STEM. (There are 100 different stems that focus on expanding the 6 letters into 7-letter-words and another 100 stems which expand the 6 letters into 8-letter-words).
  2. There are thousands of words that are in plain sight and will take Front HOOKS and Back HOOKS; Front EXTENSIONS and Back EXTENSIONS.
  • Keep the task interesting and FUN.
  • Keep a notebook with statistics that record your successes and your failures.

Remember: ANY FAILURE IS SIMPLY A SINGLE STEP TOWARD YOUR EVENTUAL SUCCESS. And that’s the truth.
Your notebook will be a confirmation of the progress which you’ll achieve. Without a record of your growth and success, you may take for granted the many advances you’ll make along your journey.

  • Develop a daily scrabble regiment and be true to it.
  • It takes 21 consecutive days to develop a habit.
  • Use a hardcopy CALENDAR to track yourself.
  • To prop up your commitment, tell a loyal friend about what you are doing and invite them to check up on you.
Scrabble is a trademark

TUESDAY
8/25/2020
‘U’ IS FOR UNFORGETTABLE
One important trick to enhance your memory is to make the important stuff unique and unforgettable.
It has been documented that some people have a rare condition that causes them to remember everything. While that would be a blessing for scrabble players for remembering words, the syndrome is a plague to those who can never forget.

TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING AND SOMETIMES BE A BAD THING.

Sure, there are 170,000+ words and after making 10 things unique it becomes a greater challenge to make #11 special too. Oh well.
I’ll never forget when I was a few points ahead of Judy Levitt the Santa Monica Club and she slapped down USUFRUCT. I challenged. It was acceptable. A few days later I shared the story and the word with friends at the Huntington Beach Club. Pat Yarnell was sitting off to one side and you couldn’t tell exactly how attuned she was to my story. A month later Pat came down to Club #350 and luck would have it that she and I were matched. On her third play in that game, she threw down USUFRUCT and chirped out a tiny snicker. Thanks for sharing, Gary.

  • What words do you remember? What caused you to remember those words.
  • Who has had the greatest impact on you, related to scrabble?
  • How do you decide what to study next?

SERIOUS STUDENTS LEARN 40%.

Scrabble is a trademark

MONDAY
8/24/2020
’T’ IS FOR TOUGH (LOVE) WORDS

  • Not owning an OWL and an OSPD6 is unacceptable.
  • Not making an earnest attempt to learn the 2s is unacceptable.
  • Not knowing the treatments available to scrabble-phobia is lame.
  • If you refuse to seek help you’ll be asked to leave home.
    That’s what a ‘tough love’ practitioner would tell you, but that’s not who I am. I’m a hugger-coddler type and prefer sweet-talking potential candidates for scrabble competition by tickling their pallet with lesser know words and stories about unusual and somewhat interesting happenings and times in scrabble circles.
    I remember many words with the specific people who played the words against me. Then I have a full story to accompany the interaction if anyone is interested enough to ask.
    STRIGIL was played against me by Stu Goldman at a tournament in Reno, Nevada. I challenged it and lost the challenge. It’s a dental instrument. I’ve played it several times after that.
    ZELKOVA was played by a 20-something newbie at her first visit to Club #350 at BORDERS BOOKSELLERS in Costa Mesa, circa 2004. She was a botany major which explains her knowing the word.

OBVIATE was played against me as an ‘outplay’ by Chuck Armstrong at a club in Livonia Michigan, circa 1993. He hooked the ‘O’ above the word ‘PACIFIED’ at (A1) and scored over 200 pts.

EKEPWELE, NGULTRUM, and NGWEE were learned by me, circa 1991 when Edna Miller hired me to create a set of flashcards for her with the words on the OWL that we coins and monetary units.

And on and on and on . . .

Scrabble is a trademark

SUNDAY
8/23/2020
’S’ IS FOR SUGARCOATED
How much time each day do you suppose the best scrabble players spend looking at and reviewing word lists, flashcards, and playing the game?

How much time in a day are you willing to earmark for scrabble?

The BACKWARDS DICTIONARY takes a lot of the legwork out of the chore of locating ‘Ending Extensions’. In my experience that helps make learning FUN. Here are a few examples:

Words that end with ‘. . . CAN’
CAN, TACAN, SICCAN, WICCAN, DECAN, PECAN, ASHCAN, BARBICAN, INDICAN, PUBLICAN, PELICAN, GALLICAN, PEMICAN, PEMMICAN, JERRICAN, OILCAN, CANCAN, COONCAN, SCAN, SHITCAN, GLUCAN, TOUCAN, GLYCAN, BILLYCAN, JERRYCAN

WORDS THAT END WITH ‘ . . . OWL
OWL, BOWL, SEAFOWL, TEABOWL, ROSEBOWL, WASHBOWL, FISHBOWL, COWL, SCOWL, FOWL, PEAFOWL, WILDFOWL, GAMEFOWL, MOORFOWL, BATFOWL, HOWL, BEHOWL, OUTHOWL, JOWL, GROWL, PROWL, YOWL

WORDS THAT END WITH ‘ . . . YI’
LUNGYI, POLYNYI

MY BACKWARD DICTIONARY includes all the legal words from the OWL up to 8-Letters Long in alphabetical order from right-to-left. This volume does not include definitions. This volume was created in April 2019, proofed with a lexicon program created by Amnon Meyers, and is still accurate at this date, 8/22/2020.

The ‘BACKWARD DICTIONARY’ hardcopy is available at $40 + $8shh payable at Paypal to the account of JFTSOI.MOSS@gmail.com For further information contact (949) 510-1673.
http://just4thespellofit.com/to-make-a-purchase/

Scrabble is a trademark

 


SATURDAY
8/22/2020
‘R’ IS FOR READING RAILROAD
It was Saturday, June 25, 1949, the summer when I would turn 7 years old. It was the first weekend after the end of the school year. I had just completed 1st Grade and I was already looking forward to the fall, 2nd Grade and Ms. Reynolds classroom. She looked a lot like that school teacher on the Our Gang Comedies, she was always smiling and she smelled like lilacs.
My mom had a special ceremony after the successful completion of the school year that was a tradition when she was a girl. She gave me a ‘Nickel’ and took me out to get an ice cream. She also gave me a gift all wrapped with a bow. It sorta felt like my birthday and I was very excited. I asked if I should unwrap the gift now and she said sure. It took me less than a few seconds for me to unwrap a MONOPOLY GAME. (Scrabble wasn’t a big thing yet.)
I asked if my friends Arnold and Philmore could come over and play and mom said sure. I ran down the stair and two doors over and rang their doorbell. I asked their mom if they could come to my house and play MONOPOLY with me. With her permission we all returned to my house where my mom had already set the board up on the table. We had played the game together before on Arnold’s set at their home.
That began the 1949 All Summer Northlawn Monopoly Tournament in which we played a total of 217 games. The final score was Arnold 86, Gary 79, and Philmore 52. Can you spell ‘F’ ‘U’ ’N’. I didn’t have that much fun at one time until I won 1st Place in my Division at a scrabble tournament in 1987 in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

Westown Theatre, Detroit, MI.

We were all baseball fans, Arnold, Philmore, and I, and being from Detroit, we rooted for the Detroit Tigers.  We were all fans of Hal Newhouse and Fred Hutchinson. Arnold knew how to keep a Box Score and taught me and Phil the technique. We each kept a notebook and listened to any of the Tiger games that summer while we played Monopoly and we’d pause the game to enter the box score after every pitch. That was where and when I learned to multi-ask.
Life was so simple in 1949. We didn’t have a TV back then, either did my friends. We made our good times with board games, card games, playing sandlot baseball, and Kick The Can. A special treat was when one of the teenage girls would accompany us to the Westown Theater on a Saturday afternoon to see a Western, some Cartoons, and watch a chapter of a Serial like Don Winslow And The Navy.

Scrabble is a trademark

 


FRIDAY
8/21/2020
‘Q’ IS FOR QUINTESSENTIAL
Let me be perfectly clear . . . no one has to take a scrabble class in order to play the game. All you need is a scrabble board, a set of 100 designated tiles, a couple of tile racks, and an opponent. (Actually you don’t even need an opponent. You could play Solitaire Scrabble and avoid any potential embarrassment which you may exhibit by misspelling any word/s.)
There is a simple version of ‘HOW TO PLAY… ’ that usually comes in the box that will explain the basic basics. HINT: If you are an adult over the age of 18 you could choose your first opponent to be anyone under the age of 6. That should be safe as long as he/she isn’t related to Andre Ornish. (That was one mistake I made back in the early 2000s.)
BUT if you have any desire of becoming a ‘SUPERHERO’ on the scrabble scene, allow me to entertain you for 21 days of lessons, assignments, direction, and hints. I’ll dangle HOOKS, WORDS with weird beginnings like ‘GJ _ _ _ _’ and ‘NG _ _ _’. I’ll explain why the Official Word List includes things like ‘CWM,’ ‘EKPWELE’, and ‘CHUTZPA’. You’ll learn the difference between an alphagram, a consogram, and a graham cracker.
I will be your personal guide and mentor as you transverse my online class, SCRABBLE 101. I help you find the scrabble club closest to you home and possibly make a connection for you to potential opponents. I’ll introduce you to online venues where you can play from the comfort of your own personal computer.

Contact me via email at JFTSOI.MOSS@gmail.com

Scrabble is a trademark

 


THURSDAY
8/20/2020
EVERY ENDING MARKS A NEW BEGINNING
One year ago on August 20, 2019, on my 77th birthday, I declared the coming year to be my ’77 SUNSET TRIP’. A major part of the last year included my road trip, beginning in Laguna woods Village, in southern California, driving north then east, all the way to Saratoga Springs, New York, then south to Nashville and back home on a southern route through Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.
My trip included 22 stops along the way, visiting and playing scrabble at clubs and tournaments, including but not limited to Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Northville, Michigan, Stratford, Ontario, CANADA, Buffalo, New York, Independence, Ohio, Nashville, Tennessee, and Escondido, California.

I traveled the trip solo in my trusty Toyota Yaris. I covered more that 5,000 miles during a total of 6 weeks. I stayed at hotels and motels except about half of my overnights I was a house-guest of scrabble friends and family members. My trip took me through the cities of 3 of my children, my grand-children, my sister and brother and others. I visited and renewed friendships with dear friends whom I hadn’t seen in many years.

The trip was very emotional at times. I drove past the home on NORTHLAWN where I grew up. I stopped in at Francis Scott Key Elementary School where I had my first teaching job, visiting my classroom which still houses a 5th Grade Class like the one I taught. I drove through the grounds of the school I founded in 1968 in West Bloomfield, Michigan and then sat nostalgically in front of the lakefront home when I lived at Union Lake. I visited Machpelah Cemetery in Ferndale, Michigan where I visited the gravesites of my parents, grandparents, my infant daughter, Laurie, and my beloved cousin Stu.

The trip was filled with joy with hugs from old friends and we shared memories of younger days. The trip was filled with voids created by the absence of those friends who have passed on, some almost just before my trip back.

The trip was filled with sites I had never seen before and left me in awe: the canyons along I15 in Utah, the Dinosaur Monument in Colorado, and some familiar ones like the Arch in St. Louis, Greektown in Detroit, Michigan, the city of Stratford, Ontario, Canada (untouched by time), the River Walk along Niagra Falls, riding along with Amish horse and buggies in upstate New York, and the Grande Canyon which is always a jaw-dropping experience no matter how many times you see it.
I enjoyed meeting many strangers along the way. Never feeling afraid or alone. People reaching out to help whenever I required assistance, repairing my car, needing new tires, getting lost in spite of having a GPS.
And then there came a time when I eventually grew weary. I had seen a lot but not everything; I had visited many but not everyone. I have eaten many of my favorites along my journey: Kansas City Bar-B-Q; Lafayette Coney Island Hot Dogs in Detroit, Greene’s Hamburgers in Farmington Hills, MI, a corned beef sandwich at The Stage Deli on Orchard Lake Road in West Bloomfield, and a slab of ribs at The Bone Yard just up the street. Finally, hot bagels at Uncommon Grounds in Saratoga Springs.

I shared my trip with some of my favorite musical artists. I almost wore out my Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson CDs. Each day when I set out on the road I cranked up ‘ON THE ROAD AGAIN’ and sang along with Willie with my loudest voice.
Then, I let Willie bring me back home with a different kind of nostalgia.
My good friend Derek Fleming had provided me with the inspiration to take this trip and he was the one who named it ’77 Sunset Trip’. I have a deep sense of gratitude for Derek and his astuteness to envision what I needed to do at this point in my life.

I returned to my California home and friends with a fresh view of who I am and from whenceforth I came. I went back to work and found renewed comfort in the steadiness and predictability of my world. And then in mid-March, while I closed my eyes, taking a long yawn, along came Covid-19 and an unpredictable future.
I lost both of my part-time jobs due to the pandemic. I only get out of the house about once or twice each week for no more than an hour at a time, to shop for groceries or to go to the pharmacy. I’ve melded into my recliner and I’ve developed amazing skills using the remote for the TV. I can recite commercial messages by heart and would be a great candidate to become a pharmaceutical rep because I’ve memorized all those mind-numbing TV ads.

The GOOD-NEWS is that I’ve used vast amounts of time to develop LEARNING TOOLS for scrabble wannabes. I’ve learned a lot along the way which will serve me well if we can ever get back to playing the game again.
Thursday, August 20, 2020, marks an ending and new beginning for me. Stay tuned and see which fork in the road I will follow.

 


WEDNESDAY
8/19/2020
‘P’ IS FOR POMOLOGY
“Here I sit like a bird in the wilderness waiting for my food.” My food in this instance would be the CATEGORY LISTS which I hoped to receive from some of the listeners of my last podcast when I spoke about this valuable tool for learning. (https://www.spreaker.com/user/10697139/jusr-for-the-spell-of-it-making-lists-wi)
Pomology would make a great ‘category list’: APPLE, BANANA, CANTALOUPE, DATES, FIGS, . . . Meanwhile, I sit here waiting.

Lesser-Known Fruit (Have you ever eaten any of these?)
*NOT A LEGAL WORD ON THE OWL

      • RAMBUTAN
      • *SALAK
      • TAMARIND
      • DRAGON FRUIT
      • DURIAN
      • MANGOSTEEN
      • *KIWANO
      • JACKFRUIT
      • CUSTARD APPLE
      • *AKEBI

Always remember to cross-reference any and all words which are NEW to YOU on the Official Word List. Don’t just assume.

 


TUESDAY
8/18/2020
‘O’ IS FOR OVERDO
When it comes to participation in events related to scrabble learning, there is no place for the word ‘OVERDO’. That’s because the challenge is daunting; trying to learn 170,000+ words in the most efficient and shortest time to dramatically completing the task is monumental.
Picture yourself at your favorite restaurant with a group of scrabble friends. You’ve been promised by the chef and the local wizard in charge that there is a magical entree on the menu when consumed in its entirety will provide you and your party with a complete and instant shift regarding your memory and knowledge of words on the OWL. Knowing how gargantuan the task of studying and infusing all the thousands of words from the OWL into your brain, you’ve decided to take the chance to do this other activity as a short-cut to ‘mavinhood’.

Your party is skeptical at the least. How can this be? But here you all sit, a bit giddy and more than curious about what your dinner will be. There are a few picky eaters in the group who are fearful that they won’t be able to eat just anything served up to you. The conversation becomes speculative about what the potion might be. The players discuss whether their scrabble abilities will grow proportionally to the number of bites they ingest or if this is an ALL-or-NOTHING event.
The servers approach the table placing plates, glasses, and silverware in front of the diners. The plates are almost twice as large as normal dinner plates. The steak knives are as big as knives used at a butcher shop. The diners are becoming more nervous, anticipating the meal.
A 24-foot diameter serving table is set up a few feet to the left of the diners and now a sense of panic has set-in the party. Two of the diners are considering leaving even before they see what is being served up. The others try to be brave and reassuring to encourage the whole party to remain.

Finally, the swinging door from the kitchen opens and reveals a HAIRY MAMMOTH being brought out on a ginormous serving cart. The wizard is pushing the dinner cart and sliding the meal onto the huge self-serve buffet table. The wizard takes center stage and explains that the party has to consume the entire MAMMOTH in order for the transference of knowledge to occur. Just as in the competitive game of scrabble there will be a TIME component. Instead of 25 minutes, the group has 25 hours for the feast. Every last bite must be consumed, except for the tusks and bones.

The wizard wishes the group ‘Good Luck’ and leaves. One in the group speaks and asks aloud, “Where do we even begin?” Another voice from the players responds, “With a single bite”.

Scrabble is a trademark

 


MONDAY
8/17/2020
‘O’ IS FOR OVERCOME
We all have the ability to OVERCOME most of the hurdles that block our progress. The question is more often whether we have the will and determination to do whatever needs to be done. If you want confirmation of this statement all you have to do is watch the last 2-minute segment of the evening news channel on any of the major networks. They each go out of their way to bring us a ‘feel-good’ story each night after all the dreadful, grueling stories that lead the news with death and destruction, atrocities and mayhem.
Overcoming a scrabble deficiency is not nearly as dire and is 99.9% doable.

Here are the formulae required:

  • D = deficiency
  • O = Opponent
  • WP = Word Power
  • Y = You
  • WK = Word Knowledge
  • WLP = Words Learned Per Day
  • OWP = Opponent’s Word Power
  • V = Victory
  • YTPK = Your Total Points From Knowledge
  • OK = Opponent’s Knowledge
  • WYWF = What Are You Waiting For
  • KB = Kick Butt
  • D = O • WP – Y • WP
  • WK = WLD • 7 • 52 > OWP
  • V = YTPK > OK
  • V = WYWF; KB
Scrabble is a trademark

SUNDAY
8/16/2020
Completely Different Skill Sets
At my beginning, before my life with competitive scrabble, I was a student than a school teacher and later a headmaster. I guess I’ve always been involved with education, teaching others, and pursuing personal learning.
Before competitive scrabble, I used all the conventional methods of study as taught by teachers to would-be teachers at the university. Reading and writing and arithmetic; social studies, science, health, and hygiene; P.E., art, and music.

Lessons were varied but limited in scope to small, focused sets of information. A normal lesson was limited to 20 vocabulary words per week, a historical story with a dozen or more characters and their interactions over a given period of time, a mathematical concept, and several pages of exercises to practice and achieve understanding and expertise.
Education, in general, was all about amassing knowledge in small bites over the years.

And then in the winter of 1987, I encountered the world of competitive scrabble. It was different from anything I had known until that time. In order to be successful in this arena, it required a completely different skill set.
Everything I had known about teaching and learning before competitive scrabble was about spreading out whatever the pursuit across TIME. Actually, the purpose of TIME is so that everything doesn’t all happen at once.
To be successful at competing at scrabble in clubs and tournaments a player has to know everything NOW. TIME becomes your enemy. You not only have to learn and know everything NOW, but there is also a timer used during each game which demands recalling words quickly before your time runs out.

Methodology for learning and teaching scrabble word-knowledge, memory-skills, and board strategies are all about learning huge chunks of information efficiently in very short periods of time. It is not for the faint-of-heart of slow movers. Many of the traditional educational methods can be tweaked and used but there has to be a sense of urgency on the part of the learner.
The components of the game include sets of patterns, hooks, extensions, anagrams stems; alphagrams, consograms, and mnemonics are methods that can be employed to amass large quantities of word knowledge in short order.

The truth is that most anyone can become a word, Mavin. It depends 
upon maintaining an I CAN ATTITUDE and never giving up.

If you are one you want to take the challenge, I offer you, my online class,
‘SCRABBLE 101’.
Contact me via email: JFTSOI.MOSS@gmail.com.

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SATURDAY
8/15/2020
’N’ IS FOR THE ‘NON’ WORDS
Patterns within the spelling of words can be very helpful as a ‘memory cue’. If you are a competitive word-game player you will want to have every advantage in the knowledge and ‘tricks’ departments to outwit your opponents. One very important tool for learning words in SETS as opposed to individual entries.  The patterns you will want to select to study should be based upon 1) the advice you glean from the mavins and 2) your personal experiences during real-time play.

I have learned that the combination ‘NON’ is a frequent-flyer on my racks. Therefore I have chosen to invest some time and energy to familiarize myself with the list of words on the OWL that contain ‘NON’ as a front extension. The front hooks and extensions are some of the easiest to spot in the dictionary because they appear at the beginning of words. Simply go to the first ‘NON-entry which is ‘NONACID’.and if you continue you’ll discover more than 150 more entries beginning with the same ‘NON’ pattern. When you play some of these words like ‘NPNMAN,’ ‘NONMUSIC,’ or ‘NONPEAK’ you’ll raise a lot of eyebrows and set your opponents’ heads to spinning.

If you have a copy of my BACKWARDS DICTIONARY, in which the words are alphabetized from right-to-left you’ll find it equally simple to find the sets of words that end with the identical patterns, all neatly set up for your usage. You can find the 35 words that end with ‘DOWN’: ‘PUSHDOWN,’ PLAYDOWN; BLOWDOWN, and FACEDOWN to list a few.  (You can purchase my BACKWARDS DICTIONARY _http://just4thespellofit.com/to-make-a-purchase/)

To mix things up when you are trying to learn more words and build your word arsenal in preparation for future competition, take the time to create some of these types of lists for yourself. It can be fun and I promise you that it will be rewarding. Words that begin with ‘ANTI,’ ‘PRO,’ ‘TOP’; words that end with ‘GUN,’ ‘IERS,’ ‘FAT’.

The BACKWARD DICTIONARY is available for purchase from
JUST FOR THE SPELL OF IT for $40 + $8 shH.
pay via Paypal to JFTSOI.MOSS@gmail.com

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FRIDAY
8/14/2020
‘M’ IS FOR MEMORY
Over the years (more than 30), I’ve devoted a lot of my energy to help you and others expand your memory. I like to think that I’ve been all-inclusive with the current trends and tools to achieve memorization. To that end, I recently reviewed a helpful book from The Princeton Review entitled ‘WORD WISE’. There is one part in particular that I’d like to share here which may be very helpful to you when it comes to building your memory of words.
It begins with and ends with HAVING A PLAN. Without a plan we all tend to be less efficient, allowing our attention to flit to-and-fro. Our intention may always remain on memorization but a plan of steps will assure us from missing out on the routine process which can be so helpful in reaching our objective.
This Princeton Review Plan is very different from the fast-draw plans which I have suggested in some of my writings. While this plan may work to a higher degree on a word-by-word basis, it works against the goal of learning large quantities of words in shorter periods of time.

STEP #1 – Try to deduce the word’s meaning from context.
STEP #2 – Look it up
STEP #3 – Note the spelling
STEP #4 – Say the word out loud
STEP#5 – Read the main definition; scan the other definitions
STEP #6 – Look at the word’s synonyms
STEP #7 – Define the word in your own words
STEP #8 – Use the word in a sentence
STEP #9 – Attach the word to a mnemonic or other memory aid
STEP #10 – Make a flashcard for the word
STEP #11 – Use the new word every chance you get

Scrabble players should also verify the word is on the OWL (Official Word List). Be certain that you look up the word on the most current edition of the OWL.

EXAMPLE:
ACERBIC (uh SUR bik) adj sour; severe; like acid in temper, mood, or tone.
• Barry sat silently as his friends read the teacher’s acerbic comments on his paper.

Acerb and acerbic are synonyms. Acerbity is the state of being acerbic.

ASSIGNMENT:
Practice the same formula as shone above with each of these three words:
EXULT; INSIPID; QUIXOTIC STUDY ON.

 

Scrabble is a Trademark

THURSDAY
8/13/2020
‘L’ IS FOR LOSING
LOSING is not necessarily a BAD thing. LOSING can be an OPPORTUNITY.

It all depends on how you deal with it.
I’ve known people who were/are obsessive about WINNING. To them losing is worse than death itself. Winning has driven several players to cheat in the hope of winning a game or a tournament. Many of these people are sad and unhappy a lot of the time. Think about it, how often can a winning string last, especially in scrabble where the LUCK FACTOR has been calculated as high as 30%.

Over the last 30 years, the longest WIN STREAK at CLUB #350 is 38, held by David Pearl. My longest win streak was amassed at the Escondido Club and was 36. Anytime anyone achieves a run of 20 or more wins, that is amazing.
BUT, what is most valuable is what you learn when you lose.

The majority of players don’t consider thinking this way. The majority of players who play this game, once the last play in a game is completed, clear the board and play the next game without giving further consideration to the words they played, the openings they created, the things they may have done differently, and more. That’s okay. BUT that’s not the M.O. of a winner.
There are important lessons to be learned within the game itself on every play. When you look at the game in this thoughtful way you will soon discover your strengths and weaknesses. With practice dissecting any game you’ll become more aware of the strategies used by both you and your opponent. You’ll find the opportunity to learn from your weaknesses and mistakes to build your future games.

‘L’ is also for ‘LIONHEARTED,’ ‘LAMBASTE,’ and ‘LONGHAIR’.

Scrabble is a trademark

 


WEDNESDAY
8/12/2020
‘K” IS FOR KABLOOEY
What happens to most new club players when they get up their courage and finally take that first walk into their local scrabble club?
KABLOOEY !

Don’t be frightened. Don’t be discouraged. What did you think would happen?
For me, KABLOOEY was not a BAD thing. Rather, it was an awakening. I had witnessed a large group of players competing in the qualifying rounds of a tournament about 2 weeks before my first appearance at the local club in Livonia, Michigan. I sorta knew that I didn’t know enough to compete with these word aficionados. But I wanted to learn. I wanted to be able to do what they were all doing. I knew that it would take commitment and time.
So I faced my KABLOOEY.

It was sorta like being an ‘All American White Boy’ and being dropped off on the first day of school at some alien gathering on Mars. I had a copy of their dictionary in-hand but not one of the words they played looked familiar to me. When I looked up all those strange words I discovered that they were real words, indeed. I really learned quickly how much I didn’t know.
I was one of those ‘AVERAGE’ people who walk the streets in the US. I knew only about 5% of the words in the dictionary I was carrying. That meant that I DID NOT KNOW 95% which was about 160,000 words. I did a quick mental calculation and figured out that if I learned 50 words each week, , , I could cover the entire 160,000 words in 61.5 years.
KABLOOEY !

In spite of that oppressive news, I stayed. And ooh the lessons I learned session after session, week after week. For me, reading novels was replaced by reading and creating word lists. Lists of monetary units, chemical compounds, bones in the body, lesser-known animals, words with a preponderance of certain letters, anagrams, and sooooooo much more.

I remember the first time I played the word ‘KABLOOEY’. It was against Randy Greenspan at a tournament in Buffalo, New York in 1992. I was way out of my league playing this guy. Randy was a top player. My rack was A-B-K-L-O-O-Y and he had just made the opening play of ‘NGWEE’ (H8-L8). I had no idea if his play was acceptable but he was Randy Greenspan. That’s when I saw ‘KABLOO-Y’ and chuckled to myself. I had no idea if that was a good word. I took a deep breath and played the bingo (L2-L9) for 84 points. Randy muttered, “Great find”. I didn’t win that game but it didn’t matter much to me. I had made a mark in the scrabble world.

Scrabble is a trademark

TUESDAY
8/11/2020
‘J’ IS FOR JOKER
In the world of scrabble, the ‘joker’ is the BLANK. While the face value of the BLANK is zero, it is considered by the mavins as the most valuable tile in the bag. There are 2 BLANKS in each set of 100 tiles.
The versatility of the BLANK is what makes it so important Therefore it is incumbent upon all serious players to understand its value and how and when to play it.
Newbies are generally so eager to find a word and play it that they squander their blanks without a second thought.
Serious players want to WIN. One wins by scoring the most points. Every bingo (word using all 7 tiles from your rack) played earns 50 bonus points. The blank in the hands of competent players will frequently lead to creating a bingo. Enough said.

UNWRITTEN RULE. Never play a blank for less than 50 points. Never play an ’S’ for less than 25 – 30 points.

Just having the BLANK is no guarantee of finding and playing bingo but the BLANK along with a bit of planning and knowledge will make you very dangerous. But whatever you do NEVER WASTE A BLANK.
Besides being a game that revolves around words . . . Scrabble is a game of MEMORY and PREPARATION. You prepare yourself by learning about the pieces of the game. One of the first things you’ll learn is the odds of drawing good racks and the letters that fit together to make the bingos and earn the highest scores. Many of those bingo words are related to sets of tiles that make up STEMS. A STEM with a BLANK is as good as a sure thing, leading to a bingo.

For information and training about STEMS, send me an email
JFTSOI.MOSS@gmail.com

Scrabble is a trademark

MONDAY
8/10/2020

‘I’ IS FOR IMAGINE


Imagine there are no mavins
It is easy if you try
No opponents beating up on you
Your WINs reaching to the sky
Imagine all the people cheering what you play
Imagine there’s no phonies
It isn’t hard to do
No one would dare to challenge you
And no losing too
Imagine all the people leaving lines to play
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the scrabble world will be as one
Imagine endless bingos
Reaching far across the board
Learn the skills and then come play with us
and you’ll be THE WORD.

Scrabble is a trademark

SUNDAY
8/9/2020
ARE YOU READY TO WIN?
It’s up to you. It’s as easy as that. You decide.
I’m talking about winning at scrabble. All it takes is some familiarity with the Official Word List, some Luck-Of-The-Draw, and the skill to get the words onto the board in the highest-scoring places.

Where to begin? That’s what most players ask.

The 107 2-Letter-Words, the stems, hooks, and anagrams. If you can master even 10% of this you can be in the top 2% of club players.
Sounds easy but don’t assume that. There are 175+ words on the OWL, so the 10% I suggested is 17,500 + words. The average bear on the street knows only about 8,500 words (that’s why they generally write the newspapers on a 5th Grade reading level).

Many wannabe players think a player becomes better-to-really-good by simply playing a lot. So those folks who find local clubs come back week after week and even find a second club to attend. At club, each player may play up to 4 games. The average player takes 17 turns in a game . . . so a person who plays 2 clubs every week will take a total of about 136 plays. It is common that a player will repeat playing some words. Therefore with 136 turns, you may play about 110 different words. 110 words = .000628% of the words in the dictionary. Even if you played a different word on every play it could take you more than 23.11 years to play all of the current words. Quite daunting, isn’t it?
The truth is . . . one doesn’t become a good player by simply playing more often. There is a method to becoming a better scrabble player, the same as becoming better at anything else. Practice, practice, practice all the skills.

SI Exif

If you are a baseball player you have to learn how to catch, throw, bat, run, read signals, be a team player, and probably other things that I don’t even know about.

If you are a scrabble player with a great vocabulary but lack the skill of getting your words onto the board, you will rarely WIN. If you don’t know the 2s you will be a frequent loser.
What do you still have to do to be ready to WIN?

YOU can DO IT! It’s all up to you.

Scrabble is a trademark

SATURDAY
8/8/2020
ARBYs AIN’T AFRAID OF NO FISH and I AIN’T AFRAID OF NO WORDS.
I think it was President Roosevelt who said, “There’s nothing to fear but FEAR itself.” Fear can be crippling and can freeze us into a state of inaction. While you are frozen the world keeps moving and passes you by.
The strategy that works best is simply to keep on moving forward. Take just one more step, then another and another. When you are frozen you become an easy target; keep on moving no matter what the chore.
Learn one more word; learn one more hook; take one more bite from the seemingly endless pile of anagrams; inhale the rarefied air of lesser-known words. Use your standard Official Word List to review words that begin with the same patterns; use my BACKWARDS DICTIONARY to review words that end with the same patterns.
Most people find their comfort zone close to home. They tend to stay with the familiar. They continue to review the items which they have learned in the past and feel secure because they already know much of that data. General growth occurs in less certain areas where you have to face the unknown. Take a chance; learn something new and then review it. Keep a notebook with records of the ‘new’ things that you learn day after day. Evaluate yourself based upon your personal growth; set goals for yourself. Give yourself rewards for achieving higher levels of knowing.

‘STICKS AND STONES CAN BREAK MY BONES
BUT WORDS CAN NEVER HURT ME.’

The lack of word knowledge can hurt you, especially if you are a word-game player. Do you know what to study first? Do you know where to begin? It can become overwhelming because there are so many different pieces to learn about the game of scrabble. Some people become overwhelmed and put the challenge off until tomorrow. . . Then Tomorrow Never Comes.

Check out ‘Scrabble 101’ the online class. Learn ‘HOW TO’ in an efficient manner and follow an organized plan to achieve your goals.

YES, YOU CAN!
JFTSOI.MOSS@gmail.com
Don’t be afraid.

Scrabble is a trademark

FRIDAY
8/7/2020
‘H’ IS FOR HAPPY BIRTHDAY
When I woke up this morning it was a day like any other day except it is my daughter Sue’s birthday, her 50th Birthday. How did that happen? I’m too young to have a child who is ’50’. Okay, so I’m an old fart

Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you.
Happy Birthday dear Susan,
Happy Birthday to you,

(susanemoss@yahoo.com) Wish I were back in Michigan today to give you a big hug and a kiss. Lots of Love.
As a Leo born on August 7th, you are well known for being both humorous and optimistic. You love to have everyone’s attention because it gives you the coveted opportunity to make others laugh. Your whit is one of your greatest tools for winning over others and it is greatly appreciated by those close to you.
As a Leo person, you are a very kind person. You are able to give others the attention and affection that they need. It’s as if you are able to draw from a deep well because you never seem to run out of them.
While people may get frazzled or on edge, you always find it in you to say the right word, to do acts of service, and otherwise let them know that somebody cares. This is due to the fact that you are easily the most energetic person in the room. You are able to draw a seemingly endless supply of energy from deep within.
Lovers born on August 7th are very supportive people. You are able to support your partner’s dreams, ambitions, and even crazy ideas for however long it takes. In many cases, it would feel that it’s only you and your romantic partner against the world. That’s the kind of atmosphere your personality tends to support. It is, of course, a very nurturing atmosphere and that can lead to all sorts of positive growth and results at the end. It can also lead to a very imbalanced relationship.

Also Happy Birthday to:
Daz Black, 34.
Andrew Siwicki, 27.
Ti Taylor, 21.
Sidney Crosby, 32. Hockey Player.
Brett Gray, 23.
Mike Trout, 28. Baseball Player.
Charlize Theron. 44, American, South African, Award-Winning Actress
Michael Shannon. 45, American.
Abbie Cornish. 37, Australian. Actress, Rapper.
David Duchovny. 59, American, Award-Winning Actor
Elizabeth Báthory. 54, Hungarian. Countess, Serial Killer.
Francesca Eastwood. 26, American. Actress.
Wayne Knight. 64, American.
Mata Hari. 41, Dutch.

Scrabble is a trademark

THURSDAY
8/6/2020
‘G’ IS FOR GRATEFUL
Thank you.
I don’t know exactly where you find yourself these days during the pandemic, with all the required social distancing. I am so tired of this, like so many of you.
AND YET . . . I am very grateful for the life I do have after watching all the hardships being faced on a daily basis by thousands across the US and around the world. I happen to live in a very SANE, senior community where the life we have left to live is respected, witnessed by the actions taken by the overwhelmingly large part of the community (wearing masks and social distancing).
Here in Laguna Woods Village (southern California) the wearing of masks is required within the entire 6+ square miles and the 23+ thousand residents. People do use the swimming pools, golf courses, and tennis courts. The public may go out to walk and shop but all are cognizant of the fragile balance that our age group faces in regard to COVID-19.
No large pool parties without masks here in our village, for NOW. No dances or large meetings, or theater during the pandemic. We’ll make up for all that later. For now, we find other ways to busy ourselves with Netflix, bring in carry-out, and catching up on chores and projects that have piled up from before life shut down.
The one thing I miss the most is playing Club Scrabble. Sure there are still plenty of scrabble online venues and Words With Friends too. But that’s nowhere near the same as a head-to-head game against the friends who play at club. Hopefully some of the ‘OLD NORMAL’ will return soon.

Meanwhile let’s focus on the things we have. My guess is that most people reading this are finding creative ways to get by.   
Stay Safe.

Scrabble is a trademark

WEDNESDAY
8/5/2020
‘F’ IS FOR FUN
There is NO LIMIT on the amount of FUN you are allowed to enjoy. It’s yours for the taking.
Some people have fun riding wild roller-coasters at theme parks while others skydive over the desert. Some people enjoy sitting in lounge chairs at the seashore while others like hiking trails and spelunking in caves. I know people whose greatest fun is found reading at the library and others who pony up to a bar drinking bourbon with a beer chaser. I have a friend who loves to bar-b-que and cater to his many friends. I know a lady who would spend every waking moment at the beach in front of her easel painting the waves and sea birds in the moment.
Some people are word lovers and game players whose thrill is identifying lesser-known words on a rack of tiles and playing them onto the scrabble board. Many of these people become ecstatic when they can join their word onto the board using multiple hooks, creating ‘combo-word’ plays (a skill used by experts). While WINNING is the ultimate goal and produces the MOST FUN for experts, their finesse plays using lesser-known words and drawing challenges from their opponents is another source of GREAT FUN for these word mavens.
Some people have fun going shopping for things they don’t need. Other people find it fun to find items on sale with the greatest savings. I am a sucker for those great deals online and spend some of my dollars on all kinds of ‘junk’ I’ll never use. Some folks find ‘road trips’ to be great fun, going off on side roads to find the road less traveled and smell the roses. Others, like me, just want to get there and enjoy the ‘main event,’ the destination.
Many people like to record their travels and their interfaces with others. Most have endless photos and videos taken on their smartphones, stored for future reference. Many print their photos and mount them in albums which live in their homes on bookshelves or on a coffee table. I like to write my memories in my blogs or other files. Most times there are just too many to write about so I pick and choose my subjects while the rest live on in places deep within my memory.
One of my favorite fun things to do is go on a ‘mind trip’. I have developed my ability to visit every home on the block where I lived when I was 8 years old. I can visit every home on both sides of the street and pretty much remember the names of the neighbors who lived there; I can even conger up a mental picture of their faces. I can do the same with my ancient schoolmates from elementary through high school, the guys in my boy-scout troop, and more. At times these trips stir memory and it begs me to write about things I haven’t thought about in years.

We all have FUN in different ways.
Remember to seek out your fun and enjoy it!

Scrabble is a trademark

TUESDAY
8/4/2020
‘E’ IS FOR EFFORT, ENERGY, AND EVERYTHING SCRABBLE
Eunice Smith was a scrabble player who I met, she was new when I first began playing at a Club in Livonia, Michigan in the late 1980s. I believe that Eunice had been a school social worker, professionally. When I met Eunice she was already retired and in her late 60s. She was very enthusiastic about the game of scrabble and enjoyed the competition and the camaraderie of the community.
In the 1990s there were more than 25,000 active club and tournament players. Competitive Scrabble was very welcoming to all and a relatively inexpensive way to spend an evening of interesting entertainment. Attending a weekend tournament might involve an entry fee of as little as $15 and if you were traveling out of town groups of players would travel together and share expenses. Many players opened their homes to guests as well.
Close to half or more of the tournament players were retirees and they were serious enough about the game that they invested some amount of time studying the words on the Official Word List. The prize money was meager but that didn’t seem to matter to most. We had fun times at bargain prices and the good times were a guarantee.
Eunice is gone now but her kindness and spirit caused me to remember her today (and Eunice begins with ‘E’). My most vivid memory of Eunice is one Sunday in Brantford, Ontario, Canada. I drove there on my own and Eunice had gotten there with a group of her lady friends. After the tournament ended on Sunday afternoon the ladies were planning on enjoying a leisurely meal and staying the night, driving back to Detroit, Mi., the next day. But Eunice was not feeling well and asked if I was driving back right after the tournament ended. Yes, I was so I invited her to ride with me.
I’ve been known to be a driver with a LEAD FOOT. After the last game ended I used the bathroom then belted Eunice safely into the back seat. It had taken her lady friends nearly 6 hours to get from Detroit to Brantford. Eunice and I left Brantford at 3:30 PM and I pulled up at her front door a few minutes after 7 PM. She had slept all the way home and was surprised to have arrived so quickly.

Shhhhhh. Don’t tell anyone.

Scrabble is a trademark

MONDAY
8/3/2020
‘D’ IS FOR ‘DO IT’
The most difficult part of DOING for most people is simply getting started. You’ve most likely been in that place at some time.
I’ve procrastinated to my own detriment on more than one occasion. I don’t have any good reason as to why. Back when I was completing the work on my Master’s Thesis, I had completed collecting all the data and only had to assemble the pieces. Completing my Masters’s Degree came with an automatic raise in pay. For whatever reason, it took me months to complete the task. Actually, once I began the final step I did the whole enchilada in one afternoon.
When people begin to procrastinate it’s not unusual to get stuck.

Then there’s the other side of that coin. For me, frequently when I begin DOING I end up on a DOING roll. One project flows into the next, then the next, and before I know it I have created 27-word lists, 53 sets of video flashcards, and a week’s worth of blogs. During a roll, I feel creative, brilliant, and unstoppable.
For the most part, when people enroll as students into my online class, Scrabble 101, they grant me permission to be their mentor. Their mindsets when they are students is to follow my lead and to perform to earn my approval while working toward their goals. Magic happens in that head-space.
I also notice that when I am the student in someone else’s class I function at a higher level too. Therefore I advise you to always find a teacher.
Lastly, it is very valuable to have a student. Be their teacher. As you prepare to teach you will develop a deeper level of understanding of the topic as you prepare to convey the information.

 

Scrabble is a trademark

SUNDAY
8/2/2020
‘C’ IS FOR CHAMPION
There is a champion within each of us. All you have to do to become the champion within YOU is to call upon it.

When was the last time you called upon the hero within you?

As for me, today started like any other day. I got up, showered, brushed my teeth, headed out, and took a shortcut through the desert. Somewhere along the way, I did a little self-talk, soliciting the best that I can be.
I knew exactly what I needed to do. First I stopped at a drive-thru Starbucks for a large iced Vanilla Latte and a cranberry scone. Feeling a bit frisky, I risked eating and drinking while driving, anticipating completing my light breakfast by the time I got back home.
Arriving and parking in the same parking spot I had left an hour earlier, I took the stairs, two at a time, entering my condo and settling into my favorite easy chair where I pulled my laptop computer onto my lap and dove into writing my daily blog.
Like always I relied upon my memories of the champions I’ve known over the last 30 years and the tricks they’ve shared with me to hone my scrabble prowess. I created a two-page outline on Keynote before I began to create slides, pouring out valuable tips for wannabe scrabble enthusiasts.
With today being the day I’m featuring ‘C’, I remind you to employ all of the ‘C’ qualities and actions common among Champions: CONCENTRATE, CHOOSE, CREATE, CELEBRATE, CHICANE, CLASSIFY, COACH, COGNIZE, CONCEIVE, and CRAFT. Use these and other tools with spaced-repetition to become your very BEST.

Scrabble is a trademark

SATURDAY
8/1/2020
‘B’ IS FOR BLOG
Most experts agree that the first blog was Links.net, created in 1994 by then-student Justin Hall as a place to publish his writing. The site consisted entirely of brief posts, each one sharing a link and some of his thoughts on the content within.
Currently, there are over 152 million blogs on the internet. A new blog post is published every 0.5 seconds. A quarter of all websites on the internet are blogs. 77% of internet users read blogs regularly.
I was a blogger way before the first blog was established. My writings back then were for my own pleasure and amusement. I wrote a lot in longhand in journals and a lot of my rantings were about my thoughts and feelings relating to life’s personal challenges.
Writing is a very natural medium for me. Both my father and his father were productive scribes. Both wrote poems and rhymes much like Ogden Nash. Both were romantics and wrote love letters and poems to their sweethearts. My grandpa Moss was the poet laureate of The Toledo Blade and my dad wrote song parodies in celebrations of family and friends. At my Bar Mitzvah, he serenaded me with his lyrics, a version of ‘Mighty Like A Rose’.
In the late 1990s when I noticed so many others writing blogs, at a time when my passion for scrabble was raging within me, I began writing my first scrabble blogs. I surprised myself by not running out of things to say, related to scrabble. During that period I never experienced ‘writers’ block’ for a string of 24 months.
My current blog has not skipped more than a day or two since the beginning of 9/1/2019. In the early 2000s, I had a streak of more than 500 consecutive days of blogs. I’m just a blabbing, blogging fool.

Can you spell P-R-O-L-I-F-I-C ?

Scrabble is a trademark

FRIDAY
7/31/2020
‘A’ IS FOR ANAGRAM
Wikipedia tells us, “An anagram is a word or phrase formed by rearranging the letters of a different word or phrase, typically using all the original letters exactly once. For example, the word anagram can be rearranged into ‘nag a ram’, or the word binary into ‘brainy’, or the word adobe into ‘abode’.  The original word or phrase is known as the subject of the anagram. Any word or phrase that exactly reproduces the letters in another order is an anagram. Someone who creates anagrams may be called an “anagrammatist,” and the goal of a serious or skilled anagrammatist is to produce anagrams that reflect or comment on their subject.”

One of the vital skills required by the champion scrabble players is they are masters in their abilities as “anagrammatists”.

Back in the early 1990s, a small handheld device appeared on the scrabble scene which was basically a computer chip dedicated to the lexicon containing the Official Word List of the day. This device was one of the first ‘Anagrammers’. Once scrabble players learned about the device, the word spread quickly, and within a few weeks, every serious player-owned one or more of these tools for both word study and word adjudication.
This came at the beginning of the ‘personal computer era’.

About this same time I was living in Farmington Hills, Michigan. I was heavily into the scrabble scene, directing 3 weekly clubs, producing a weekly scrabble program on cable TV called ‘JUST FOR THE SPELL OF IT,’ and developing word list, whiz cards, and word puzzles related to scrabble words. A local player, Ravi Ravichandran, who happened to be an accomplished computer programmer, had it in mind to write an anagramming program which he called LEXPERT. I was privileged to be asked to join with a group of highly distinguished scrabble MAVINS, Chuck Armstrong, and Rodney Nivison, to provide consul as a consultant.
Within the first year of the handheld anagrammer appearing and being used by the scrabble masses, the level of play expanded exponentially, reflecting the use of the site as a study tool. Ratings rose across the board among tournament players and the vocabularies of the average player grew by as much as 10%.

Scrabble is a trademark

THURSDAY
7/30/2020
LOW BUDGET ENTERTAINMENT
Bird Watching is a low budget activity until you purchase a first-class pair of binoculars or travel to far-flung locations to spy upon your winged friends.
Hiking doesn’t have to be an expensive hobby. To do it right you most likely should secure a good pair of walking shoes and maybe a stylish ensemble. (How about a walking stick?)
What about building an EXPERT’s knowledge of scrabble words? That can be a very low budget scenario. You would have to obtain an up-to-date version of the OWL (Official Word List) and a copy of OSPD6 (6th Edition of The Official Scrabble Players’ Dictionary). Both items could be found on eBay or AMAZON. A large stack of 3×5 cards and a few markers, and a computer with a scrabble dedicated LEXICON anagrammer. Voila, you’re in business.
All three of these hobbies can take endless hours, months, and/or years of life. You can pick and choose your times to engage in any of the above. But BEWARE! All of the above are very addictive. Of the three, learning words is the most dangerous because it can be done anywhere, so it can steal your time away when you least expect it.

  • You can do it while you drive; for each word you learn you’ll thrive.
  • You can study in the shower where you’ll clean up building word-power.
  • You can do it in your bed, where words will seep into your head.
  • You can do it on the can, while you contemplate a plan.
  • You can do it with a friend from day’s start until the day’s end.
  • You can do it on the farm where learning is a charm.
  • From Anagrams to Hooks with words from lists and books.
Scrabble is a trademark

WEDNESDAY
7/29/2020
TENACITY & COURAGE
You thought it couldn’t be done but then after discovering and prepping with WHIZ CARDS (flashcards filled with scrabble jargon), you met the challenge and soared in the scrabble ranks from Novice to an Intermediate ranked player.
Even though you have had many successes in your life, like many others, you may have underestimated your abilities. It’s a fact that most people DON’T KNOW how high they can go, how much they can learn, the limitless abilities they possess. That includes YOU.
The TRICK to achievement is not a TRICK at all. A great number of us have been programmed negatively (on purpose or simply in error).
I founded a school in 1968 and was the headmaster from ’68 thru ’85. Prior to that, I had been a public school teacher and counselor. During those years I was also a parent to young children. I observed many, many children who had been labeled wrongly in would-be traps that could potentially stunt their growth and development.
One 5th Grade boy, Arthur, was saddled with reports in his file describing him as deficient in math and reading. When I worked with Arthur I learned that his passion was baseball. He had been reading biographies about his heroes to the exclusion of generalizes reading. He could tell you about the histories of little known players and managers in the game since the game’s inception in 1839. While Arthur had a string of failing grades on generalized math evaluations he could easily compute batting averages and the ERAs of pitchers. Most of his teachers had no idea.
My own daughter Stacy struggled in 1st Grade while her mother and I knew how capable she was. We took her out of the public schools and move her to a Montessori School. They used their tools and techniques and reported that Stacy was still failing. While watching a TV program about the GOW SCHOOL in Rochester, NY for dyslexic students I saw in their students’ qualities that mirrored Stacy in my view. Using that information we sought out help and learned that Stacy was dyslexic. Stacy went on to graduate from Eastern Michigan University with a teaching degree.
Arthur, Stacy, and many others fall into pigeonholes because of under-educated and/or lazy teachers and administrators. Through the TENACITY & COURAGE of parents, teachers, and the students themselves, kids can achieve their full potential.

Scrabble is a trademark

TUESDAY
7/28/2020
BY THE INCH ITS A SINCH; BY THE YARD IT CAN SEEM HARD; IF YOU GET TO A MILE YOU’LL WEAR A PERMANENT SMILE.
We’ve all heard it preached that ‘the more effort you put into anything, the greater return you’ll receive’.
No kidding. That idea is what’s behind all the lessons I create, the exercises I design, and the coaching I provide.
And all that I do has ‘zero value’ unless it is put into action by the people I work with.

Have you ever been the teacher, helping your child read a book or work a math problem and witness their discovery when something in them clicks . . . and they GET IT? Have you been privileged to see the twinkle in a student’s eyes when the light within sparks understanding?
That’s why teachers teach. That’s why people share their passions with others.

For some learning the 2s is an inch; for others, it’s a yard and for still others, it is a mile. We all learn differently and at different rates. The basic truth is that we are all capable to achieve. And we can achieve by being persistent.
Will you be the next Wilma Rudolph, the next J. A. Jance, or the next Rebbi of Bardichev? Perhaps. But what is even more important than being better than someone else is becoming the best version of YOU you can be.

Set personal goals for yourself and keep moving forward. Read a page every day; learn a new word every day, keep track of your accomplishments, and record your successes. Always know ‘YES I CAN’.

Scrabble is a trademark

MONDAY
7/27/2020
THE UNEXPLAINED
There are roughly 6,500 spoken languages in the world today. However, about 2,000 of those languages have fewer than 1,000 speakers.
Among the community of scrabble players around the world, there are no more than a dozen different word lists. The main 2 lexicons used during tournament play are the OWL (Official Word List) governed by NASPA and the COLLINS, used in the United Kingdom, Africa, and elsewhere.

The OWL has 175,000+ entries placed there by a ‘word committee’ which determines the entries. This word committee is the body that determines additions and deletions from the official list. The list is amended every 5 – 10 years. Copies of the OWL are sold only through NASPA via their web site.
Proper names and abbreviations are not legal to play in the game of scrabble. The OWL is an alphabetical list of the legal words from 2 – 14 letters long. Definitions for MOST words on the lexicon are printed by Merriam Webster©. The Official SCRABBLE Players Dictionary, Sixth Ed. (Mass Market Paperback) 2018 Copyright, by Merriam-Webster [Merriam-Webster] on amazon.com.

Many words have more than a single definition. Therefore you will find many words considered to be Proper Nouns, in one sense, yet acceptable because these words have another meaning. (bob, nancy, abagail, tom, benjamin). And each of the 2-letter-words has a designated definition that is not an abbreviation ( ed = education; jo = a sweetheart; ew = an interjection)
There are currently more than 140 ‘naughty words’ that are on the OWL but are not included in the OSPD6, for the purpose of political correctness. These words are legal to play in a game or tournament because they are on the OWL. If you want a copy of this list, send me $10 and a stamped, self-addressed envelope and I will send it to you. (send to JFTSOI, 3367 Punta Alta #3B, Laguna Woods, CA. 92637).

 

Scrabble is a trademark

SUNDAY
7/26/2020
A SINGLE DAY RECORD FOR CORONA DEATHS
Not a single person has ever died from studying scrabble words. And the practice is not contagious. There have been a few reports of eye-strain and fatigue among crammers who didn’t utilize Spaced-Repetition.
I’m not worried about the masses; I’m not worried about the world, I’m worried about YOU. BALANCE is the answer. Take a 5-minute break for every 30 minutes of study.

Does the President (POTUS) have the legal power to restrict the 1st Amendment rights of fugitives released from Federal prisons? If so, can POTUS also designate specific lexicons and words therein which may and not be used by those persons? What about the ‘Naughty words’? This could possibly create chaos in the world of scrabble and novelists.
Here’s the deal: All you’d be risking by increasing your study regiment is the possibility of criticism from POTUS and being thrown into lockup like Michael Cohen. If that occurred, your council could argue that it was an arbitrary act to allow POTUS to forge ahead of you in the ranks. I believe that the courts would uphold your position and the only cost to you would be the TIME it took for you to appear.

Just remember to wear a mask.

(The context of today’s BLOG clearly demonstrates that
I am not well and have lost my focus.)

Scrabble is a Trademark

FRIDAY
7/24/3030
WOKE UP LOW TODAY. 
Bring a Type-2 Diabetic can get me down.  I wear the hat of a mad scientist as I struggle to balance my food and pills and injections to keep my blood sugar steady as she goes.  It’s no easy feat.  Most of the time I’m in a range but I’m seldom ‘right on’ and it’s just a fluke when I get it right.  Often it comes down to: “To Eat or Not To Eat . . . THAT IS THE QUESTION.” 
I’ve taken classes from nurse dieticians; I’ve volunteered and have been a lab rat for endocrinologists in their study trials.  But its nothing with the certainty of learning a STEM.  Once you learn a STEM, you know it and you can count on SATINE + E always being ETESIAN.  With ingesting food, the outcome is rarely the same two times in a row.  Trying to keep your A1C at the right level is more difficult than walking on a tight-rope over ‘The Grande Canyon’.  One tries and tries, becoming frustrated and then giving up, only to try again tomorrow.  The diets that work provide menus abundant with straw-like dishes.  One may be able to adhere to that diet for a month or two but life without food is dismal, empty, and sad.  It’s like playing scrabble with a dictionary that has less than a total of 10 words.  How many times can you play ‘DESSERT’ without tasting the lemon meringue pie?   
The good thing about waking up ‘LOW’ is that I require a sugar boost to steady myself and that requires a sugary treat.  BUT I have to be careful so I don’t overdo it.  BALANCE, BALANCE, BALANCE.  The highs are dangerous but I don’t experience any outward adverse reactions to the highs.  When I gt a LOW that is lower than ’80’ I sweat profusely and shake and begin to fade out.  I’ve learned to quickly spread a bath sheet over my recliner, in front of the TV, slice up a naval orange and grab a handful of cookies, then get comfortable in my chair, turn on CNN, eat my sugary treats and wait 20 minutes for normalcy to return.  The transition from LOW to normal is frequently accompanied by schvitzing off 3 to 5 pounds of water.  If a LOW were to ever be too low, I could go into diabetic shock and drift away.  We all have something.  This is my reality. 

 


THURSDAY
7/23/2020
An Inspiration
Synapses expand with dynamic increased speed.
Links fade in, fade out, forming alphagrams
To words in the OWL.  Little known items
In the lexicon draw challenges and cause
Directors to call out Acceptable.

Newbies stumble upon stems and unknown 2s
On the list of 107. Three-letter-combinations that
Look more like alphabet soup or an utterance
Than real words.   What’s a CWM or a SHO? It seems
That you can add almost any HOOK to the front of
Words like S+hero=SHERO and A+cold=ACOLD.

How did the mavins discover these words? Did they
Read the list of 175,000? What sorcery do the experts
Employ to recall the arcane? Do they have implanted
Chips behind their ears?   Obsessive passions abound
In the tunnel vision lives of dedicated wordsmiths.

While some go bowling or knit, this set of word freaks
Devote their waking hours to wordplay. Anagramming
Street signs, reading dictionaries, thumbing through
Thesauri.   Creating word lists with strange beginnings,
Unusual ending and others Just For The Spell Of It.

Measuring their personal worth and value by amassing
Rating Points, comparing themselves to opponents.
Acquiring friendships from coast to coast and around
The globe; earning invitations for unlimited vacations at
The price of a willingness to play 4-Games per day.

Some say it’s only a game.    
Value, priceless.


WEDNESDAY
7/22/2020
WHO HERE CLIMB LADDERS WHEN THEY STUDY SCRABBLE?
Climbing ladders can be dangerous. Each year there are more than 164,000 visits to emergency rooms as a result of ladder accidents.

  • Keep your feet planted firmly on the ground.
  • Never take your eye off the target.
  • Stay true to your mission.
  • Take your vitamins and tell your doctor right away if you are experiencing symptoms.

You can do this!
Remember the goal: the instant release of vocabulary skills during scrabble play.

  • Use cues to prompt appropriate releases such as: placing your palm to your forehead; bringing your finger to the side of your nose; or pulling gentle on your ear-lobe.  Using all three and rotating them will surely confuse and upset most opponents.
  • Confuse your opponent by being clever and playing quickly. Think about your opponent’s time. Talk to yourself in a quiet mumble so that your opponent cannot hear the words but become anxious.
  • Wear comfortable clothing and have extra pens and pencils, extra tracking sheets, and a colorful face mask.
  • Use the restroom before you come to the scrabble board and arrive at least 5 minutes before starting time.

And there you go.


TUESDAY
7/21/2020
EXTREME MEASURES
175,000+ words are on the OWL
I’ve known only a handful of scrabble players who have claimed to know all the words on the OWL (Official Word List). For most of us, it is only a fantasy to know and remember all these words. The last player who told me that he had achieved that feat was “Mr. 77″, Mark Landsberg. I sorta snickered and he offered to show me. So I challenged him.
Mark handed me a current copy of the OWL and asked me to turn to the beginning of any letter, so I opened the OWL at random to the letter ’N’. He began with the first word ‘NA’ and continued: NAAN, NAB, NABBER, NABE, NABIS, NABOB, etc, (pronouncing then spelling each word). After two pages of ’N’ words, he suggested that I choose another letter and I turned to ‘C’. Mark took a breath and resumed: CAB, CABAL, CABALA, CABALISM, CABALIST, CABALLED, and so forth.
I suggested that he had a photographic memory and Mark just laughed and said NOT AT ALL. He never explained just how he accomplished his amazing feat. But I became an instant believer.
If you have been around the world of scrabble players, especially at its highest levels, you’ve met many people with super-human scrabble skills. I have been humbled by several of them. I don’t particularly enjoy the helpless feeling of being face-to-face as a victim at the scrabble board with these giants. It’s like being in a cage with a hungry lion without a weapon.

MIAOU

(SCRABBLE is a Trademark)

MONDAY
7/20/2020
FIND OUT TO SEE IF YOU ARE ELIGIBLE
If you’re getting older time is running out.
Here’s a simple test for you to self-administered.   Pick your favorite topic, one that is closest to your greatest passion. Then write an exhaustive treatise on that subject. Go ALL OUT. When finished, count the number of DIFFERENT words that you used in the document.

If the total of different words is the same or less than 8,750 (equal to 5% of the words in the OWL), then you need to consider immediately enrolling in some version of a study plan to improve your lot in scrabble. (Check out yesterday’s podcast with Nancy Douglas who did just thathttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UvJNGBq-xQ )

At this point you may be asking yourself, where should I begin? Which words? Which Lists? Which skills do I study first?

It can be overwhelming and confusing. But the answer is very simple.

  • First, acknowledge that you can’t learn it all in a single day.
  • Next, decide to take a single step NOW. Just like all endeavors.
  • Make a pledge to yourself to create a plan, find a mentor, and begin.
  • Set some goals for yourself.
  • Use measurements to evaluate your progress and be true to your journey.

The online class, SCRABBLE 101, is one avenue to ‘scrabbledom’.

Right now, during the social distancing of the pandemic, is a great time to build your word power and scrabble skills. When scrabble clubs reopen you’ll be prepared to pounce on the scene and strut your stuff.


SUNDAY
7/19/2020
FREE, From ME to YOU.
I am gifting you 365 lesser-known, legal scrabble words, to place in your arsenal to use freely against unexpecting opponents across your scrabble board.
I am gifting you the accompanying JOY and satisfaction you will earn each time you play these words and your opponent’s pause, rub their eyes in amazement and ponder whether to Challenge or Not-To-Challenge. That is the question.
You’ll find these gifted words doled out to you ONE-BY-ONE on my Word Of The Day list on the following link: http://just4thespellofit.com/word-of-the-day/

You can double down my gift by merely looking back at the last 365 entries on this list. I guarantee that many of the entries will cause you to pause as well.
When you stop to think about it you may remember that most folks on the street know only about 5% of the words in the dictionary. That equals only 8,500 of the 175,000+ words on the OWL. Have you ever considered just how much you and I do not know?

If you feel the urge to be a benefactor to your friends, feel free to share this gift as a gift of your own.
Together we can salt the word knowledge and power of the masses and raise the bar in competitive scrabble circles. That’s what it’s all about.

  • I have a not so secret purpose here.
  • I enjoy playing the role of Johnny Appleseed in the scrabble arena.
  • I have a dream that one day little girls and boys of all ages will expand their communication skills which in turn will lead to the eradication of preconceived notions of limitations and prejudice..

Can you spell S-W-A-R-A-J ?


SATURDAY
7/18/2020
EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE
Having been the President and Chairman of the Board at “Just For The Spell Of It” for just over 30 years, I’ve made literally all of the executive decisions without ever lording over anyone else, never claiming ‘executive privilege’.
I have actually experience declaring executive privilege. It happened in my role as a tournament director when it was incumbent upon me to make word adjudications and situational rulings, interpreting the Official Rules of scrabble.
Taking a position of executive privilege makes one feel omnipotent.

Directing a local scrabble club also provided the opportunity to be in charge and call the shots. Most times there are not reasons to pull rank. Club players tend to be cooperative and gracious. A computer adjudicates all word challenges. Now and then there is a question or dispute about a ruling for some facet of play, and that’s when the pressure in on me.

  • Did you know that if at any point during a game there are six consecutive turns of zero points scored the game is automatically over, by rule? A zero-turn could be a PASS, a CHALLENGE, or EXCHANGING TILES. This actually occurred at a national tournament at the beginning of the game. The result was a final score of -6 to -14.
  • Did you know that the game begins with both players drawing a single tile out of the tile bag? The bag MUST be held at eye level or higher. The player who draws the tile closest to ‘A’ plays first. (A BLANK beats an ‘A’) The person who goes second gets to choose the equipment, however, PROTILES have a preference for other tiles, and DIGITAL CLOCKS have a preference for analog clocks. Boards with ridges have a preference for cardboard boards and boards with standard colors have a preference for designer boards.
  • Did you know that the OFFICIAL RULES lists the 9 steps to properly complete a turn?
  • Did you know that many players do not how to complete their turn properly?

 

(SCRABBLE is a Trademark)

FRIDAY
7/17/2020
THIS IS BREAKING NEWS
More than 16,400 current and former scrabble club players admitted to not knowing all of the 1,024 legal 3-Letter-Words. Topping the list were CRU and SOH.
It was 1994 when Hasbro said that it first started removing offensive words from the Merriam-Webster Official Scrabble Players Dictionary and then reviewed the full list before each reprinting. Word purists marched and rallied against the policy on the basis that a word – is a word – is a word. The ultimate result was a compromise. Miriam-Webster began publishing a cleansed version of the OWL (Official Word List) for use in schools, while the scrabble association continued to include those ‘NAUGHTY WORDS’ in the OWL. Now in 2020, the forces of sensitivity-in-words have resurfaced as a result of the BLACK LIVES MATTER fury. While it is true that the ’N’-word lives on the OWL, it is not celebrated but it is in fact a word.

How simple life would be if we could change the worst in people
by removing unkind language?

As of today, July 17, all official club scrabble play continues to remain dark due to the Corona Virus raging across the US. Players’ skills are surely waning and diminishing due to the lack of play and the scaling back of word-study as a reflection of its necessity in the now. But, you can certainly count on this… the level of word power is retreating for those who have relaxed their study regimen.  Those players who remain true to expanding their word knowledge will flourish once play resumes and they will steal away rating points from the slackers.

Many people maintain an attitude that ‘THINGS TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES’. That is a dangerous outlook if one has high-hopes for ones’ future. It leaves one vulnerable to things like COVID-19, a sudden drop of the DOW JONES, or a sudden case of APPENDICITIS. If anyone expects a comfortable and leisurely future one must take appropriate actions to guard against threats by

  • WEARING A MASK
  • INVESTING CONSERVATIVELY, and
  • LIVING A HEALTHY LIFESTYLE

Finally, if you hope to play scrabble as a mavin, you have to do more than wish or pray. The road to MAVINHOOD is paved with H

  • HOOKS
  • TWOS
  • STEMS, and
  • ANAGRAMS.

Get a NOSE-SHIELD and hold it to the grindstone.
For assistance call me: (949) 510-1673.

(SCRABBLE is a Trademark)

THURSDAY
7/16/2020
When you’re ready give a boost to your scrabble game. . . I’m here.
It’s as easy as being ready and declaring it. We can begin your transformation in an hour, in a day, or whenever you are ready.
While talking with and listening to people I’ve been taking notes, trying to discover the reasons that divide the DOERS from the PROCRASTINATORS. Here are some of the results of my observations.

  • Procrastinators worry that they don’t have enough time to take on the commitment. 44% of these folks tell me that they spent last night watching reruns of LAW & ORDER.
  • Procrastinators tell me that they will rely on improving their scrabble skills by playing more often. Then one lady in this group ask me, “When a group of four players are playing, which direction is the official order of play? Clockwise or Counter-Clockwise?
  • One of the DOERS pulled out a pen and notebook and asked me, “What should I do first?”
  • Procrastinators start their day on an average of 15 minutes later than DOERS. The one item that makes the difference is the time taken choosing which socks to wear.
  • Procrastinators show a greater propensity for running STOP signs, counting their change in check-out lines, ordering food at drive-thru services, settling on a web site when surfing the web, and choosing which way to go on One Way streets.
  • DOERS show up early, stay late, and ask for homework.
  • Procrastinators ask others for their opinions but then are uncertain whether to take advice from others.
(SCRABBLE is a Trademark)

WEDNESDAY
7/15/2020
DO YOU WORRY ABOUT GOING TO THE DENTIST?
Some people find that studying is as painful as having a tooth pulled. If the thought of having your teeth cleaned or having other dental work makes your entire body tense with anxiety and fear, chances are you need an alternative to traditional dentistry. There is no question there are a number of people who experience anxiety related to going to the dentist just to avoid going altogether. Did you know there are methods that provide stress and fear-free sedation dentistry with methods that are customized to each individual patient?
If you are one of the people who avoid going to the dentist at all costs, you should consider sedation. The dentist and staff are trained to use sedation dentistry treatments that can ease your fears for all procedures. The method applied is dependent on your fear level.

May I also suggest that those of you who avoid ‘STUDY’ when it comes to building your word knowledge and word power simply REPACKAGE the way you look at things? Substitute the word PLAY wherever you find the word STUDY. Turn every learning opportunity into a GAME.
Consider using subliminal tapes (spelling scrabble words) nightly. CAUTION! This kind of learning only works during the period referred to as twilight sleep; once you literally fall asleep there are no proven positive results.
But know this, you will not experience significant improvement to your scrabble game without the infusion of learning more words, and if you don’t go to the dentist your teeth will rot and your bad breath will precede you.

JFTSOI markets all kinds of game-like scrabble learning tools from wHIZ CARDS to booklets of exercises related to HOOKS, ANAGRAMS, WORD-SCRAMBLES, the online class ‘SCRABBLE 101’, and more.

Play your way to your success.

(SCRABBLE is a Trademark)

 


TUESDAY
7/14/2020
A TRIBUTE TO A GREAT AMERICAN ARTIST
The plight of many great artists is that they are most appreciated long after they are gone. I’ve had the privilege to watch this particular artist develop, grow, and blossom. Stacy Schwartz has been an artist her entire life. As a student in her formative years, she struggled due to dyslexia. But Stacy’s creative side was never in question. To thrive in our society the emphasis revolves about reading, writing, and arithmetic. All three of these disciplines are a challenge to people with dyslexia. Earning a degree in higher education requires overcoming these challenges to compete with the uncaring system which is unsympathetic to dyslexics.
Stacy persevered. She graduated with a degree in Art Education from Eastern Michigan University. She used her talents to teach in a private school in Detroit, founded a private company, Stacy’s Murals, and currently works as an art teacher for Ypsilanti Public School District.
Stacy’s character is what makes her so special, beyond her talent. She is very giving and enhances the projects she works with through her creativity and artful presentations. She’s proficient in Set Design, designing murals in private homes, in business spaces, on building exteriors, and in public spaces like libraries and schools.

 

  • Stacy is a multi-tasker juggling her work with being a wife and mother.
  • Stacy is my #2 daughter. Happy Birthday and many more, with LOVE.
  • https://www.facebook.com/Murals.inc

Some of Stacy’s Art
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1004448186390&type=3

One Proud Papa! 7/14/20


MONDAY
7/13/2020
EASY FOR YOU TO SAY . . . OR NOT.
Most of what you hear coming out of the mouths of politicians, especially the ones with close connections to TRUMP is completely ambiguous when asked direct questions about the COVID-19 pandemic. Plans for schools reopening, and the measures to be taken with the rising numbers of deaths and hospitalizations across the US provide little to no PLAN.  Nothing New!

I may have heard a Trumper whisper that “The PANDEMIC is a good thing because the planet is overpopulated anyway; it’s just nature’s way of thinning things out.”

Meanwhile, in the spirit of becoming a more sensitive part of humanity the powers that hold the reigns of the Official Scrabble Community are in the process of eliminating ‘WORDS’ from the dictionary based on the hurt they inflict to specific minorities. Did you know the ’N’ word is in our dictionary, along with the ‘C’ word, the ‘J’ word, the ‘K’ word, the ‘A’ word and the ‘F’ word, to name a few? While they are taking away our WORDS there is still a growing number of both legal and illegal guns on the streets of America causing hundreds of thousands of real-time deaths every day. Praise the 2nd Amendment and The Gun Lobby!
I imagine that any player who is heard uttering any of the newly prohibited ‘WORDS’ will be banished from club and tournament play for life.

Congress will be beseeched to amend the 1st Amendment to prohibit the use of ‘Naughty Words’. Journalists will be subjected to lengthy prison terms should they dare to salt their articles with these expletives.
It reminds me of an incident while playing a tournament in Gatlinburg, Tennessee in March 1989. I was playing against a sweet old lady, Netty when I had the opportunity to play the ‘C’ word. I paused, feeling embarrassed, my clock was running and I had to make a judgment call; Netty reminded me of my grandmother and I could never use such a word in my grandmother’s presents.
I considered the point value of the play, then played ‘CUNT’ for 44 points and a victory. Netty didn’t blink an eye.

The good news is that the printers and distributors of the Official Scrabble Dictionary will be called upon to create a new version of the Official Lexicon which in turn will generate wealth to the top 1% in our great land. GOD BLESS AMERICA.
If there is anything we can count on in this life . . . it is CHANGE. It is reported that the KKK has frantically called committees into session to find NEW WORDS, different from the ’N’ word, to express their vile sentiments. A leak in their ranks tells us that some of the alternatives being considered to include: SNAKEBIT, TRAVELER, and BEVERAGE.

For basic simplification, I plan to substitute all expletives with a single
DANGNABIT.

(SCRABBLE is a Trademark)

SUNDAY
7/12/2020
PROPHECIES AND PREDICTIONS
We all have the capacity to see and predict the future by learning how to interpret and understand our dreams.

The question becomes, ‘Do we want to know our future?’ What will the value be?

  1. The COVID-19 pandemic will take more than 500,000 lives before mankind discovers a vaccine to counter it. It will be learned that human error was responsible for the unleashing of this pandemic.
  2. A peace accord is achieved between the Israelis and the Palestinians in 2048.
  3. The Black Rhino and the Swallow-Tail Butterfly will meet extinct on or before 2050.
  4. More than 10,000 new species will be discovered during the next 30 years.
  5. Several more US cities will identify high levels of lead in their drinking water just like Flint, Michigan, and Newark, New Jersey.
  6. Just as devices exist that we attach to our bodies that monitor our blood-sugar levels, heart rate, and temperature . . . Science will invent chips that will provide us with internal links to volumes of information. Will scrabble be less fun then?
  7. Archeological digs and investigations will continue to uncover ancient civilizations that will rewrite history. Religious leaders of all major faiths will deny the interpretation and cling to their own personal ideologies.
  8. The people of North Korea will rise and overthrow Kim Jong-un.
  9. Gun deaths in the US will reach an all-time high in minority communities.
  10. 25% of all restaurants in the US open prior to the Corona Virus Pandemic will not survive and go out of business.
  11. Predictive Analytics will be the way of the future creating an industry worth trillions of dollars.

You can raise your scrabble rating by a minimum of 100 rating points by simply taking the online class Scrabble 101 and applying the information. Call: (949) 510-1673

(SCRABBLE is a Trademark)

SATURDAY
7/11/2020
FIVE HELPFUL TIPS FOR PLAYING COMPETITIVE SCRABBLE
Most people who ask for helpful tips to beef up their game are looking for a magic pill, a silver bullet, or a magic lantern.
When asked to provide coaching sessions to the general population at the Scrabble Club within Laguna Woods Village, I gladly volunteered to arrange dates where I would speak at 45-minute sessions. The turn out was more than two dozen players in each session. The players seemed very attentive but very few to none of the participants ever asked questions at the appropriate times.
What was most disappointing to me were the results. Few to no players seemed to employ any of the simplest tips that I gave away at every session.
My experience tells me that when you give things away for free most people do not invest themselves. The other issue is that most will say, “Why study, it’s just a game”!
But that was then. It was a different audience. I assume that those who have found this blog and spend their time reading it will somehow be serious enough to use my tips to better their play. So here goes.

Tip #1
You’ve heard people say that you will get the benefits out of things proportional to the energy you invest in the process. There are 107 two letter words on the Official Word List used in club and tournament play. Most English speakers will already know more than half of those words. People who want to be competitive players will MASTER all 107 of the 2-Letter Words.
Tip #2
If you do not have a curious nature, grow one. Realize from the very beginning that there are thousands of words that you and most other people do not know. Embrace the words that you learn. Be proactive in learning them. Keep a WORD JOURNAL and write those words down and then review them frequently.  When you read a book or some article online or in a magazine and see a word that is new to you, write it down. Say it aloud. Put it into your war chest.
Tip #3
Read the Official Scrabble Dictionary, 6th Addition. Always use the most current edition that is used in the US in club play. Read no more than 10 pages a day. You do not have to start on page #1.
Tip #4
Play scrabble solitaire. Always have your board open on a table with a rack and tiles and an Official Word List at hand. Play at least 1 game every day. Your object should be to earn the highest possible score. You may use an open dictionary when you play. Record new words into your Word Journal. Keep a log of your games and scores.
Tip #5
Learn the RULES. They are on the NASPA website:
http://www.scrabbleplayers.org/w/Welcome_to_NASPAWiki

When you have a question about anything relating to scrabble, don’t hesitate to send me an email or call. Don’t waste time asking someone who may give you bad information. JFTSOI.MOSS@gmail.com

(SCRABBLE is a Trademark)

FRIDAY
7/10/2020
AND THAT’S WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT – THE HOKEY-POKEY
I was furloughed from my part-time job, working as a ‘greeter’ at Clubhouses #2 and #7, here in Laguna Woods Village.  All this happened when we were first ordered to social distance by remaining in our homes, March 18.  For me and millions of others, losing our jobs was monumental.  That little bit of extra income earned made a significant difference to my standard of living, but even more important than the earnings was the job itself and what it provided to my quality of life.
 
Work itself is often thought of as drudgery.  But especially when it’s taken away one realizes that work offers us ways to be useful and enjoy interactions with many others that add flavor to our every day lives.
 
Much of the tasks I performed on my job may have been simple and mindless, much like dancing the Hokey-Pokey.  Answering the telephone, relaying messages, inventorying silverware, setting up audio-visual equipment, and doing data-entry for internal reports.  And now, life after COVID-19.
 
So there I was with $0 income.  I am entitled to apply for Unemployment like so many other millions of laid-off workers.  If you’ve listened to the news you may have learned that nearly 50 million people have done just that since mid-March.
 
Easy, you think?  Well, that’s what I thought when I logged on to EDD.CA.GOV a week after being furloughed.  When I first became stuck in the process I tried to call a phone number provided.  After hours of dialing and redialing, I became frustrated and gave up.  Meanwhile, the news kept reporting the millions of weekly ‘new claims’ being processed.  I tried again and failed.  I was losing confidence.  How is it that a gifted scrabble player couldn’t get through this EDD system?  I wanted to find a physical location where I might have to sit in line all day, but all offices were closed.  The weeks and months passed by.  April, May, then June flitted away.  Every few days I made more attempt, unsuccessfully.
 
Then last Wednesday I found another address on the EDD website and I drove to it in Anaheim, only to learn that it was not open.  I sat in my car in the parking lot and screamed.  I went home to my computer and found yet another address in Santa Ana.  Yesterday, Thursday I made another attempt.  The man at the reception desk informed me that all EDD offices across the country are still closed, but he offered me a phone number to call and he promised that if I left a message, I would receive a return call.  I didn’t really believe him but I didn’t have anything to lose, so I called the number.
 
Two hours later I received a call from a man called Henry who offered to guide me through the online website.  I told him how I had tried the website and met several roadblocks.  Henry offered to walk me through again and took an entire 30 minutes to complete the task.  I was able to complete the mission and submit my claim.  My first check should arrive in two weeks.  
 
So much of life is just another Hokey-Pokey, 
That’s what it’s all about.

Henry is my ANGEL.

THURSDAY
7/9/2020
PASSION: IT IS NOT UNTIL YOU CAN’T LEAVE THAT YOU KNOW.
Passion can be a blessing; passion can be a curse.
But one thing is for sure . . . when you have a passion you can become like a flowing river, always on the move. Nothing can stop you. Just take a thoughtful look at The Grande Canyon.
I have had the passion experience at least twice in my lifetime (probably many more).
The first time I acknowledge my passion was in the founding of Bloomfield Nursery School & Kindergarten. It was 1968. From the very moment the idea was conceived I became so consumed that I turned myself into a form of one of those superpower heroes written about in fantasy comic books. I developed skills and talents way beyond my studies and experiences. I knew things I didn’t know I knew and I took leaps of faith that somehow worked out. I was a poor public school teacher with a dream and only $50 in my savings account. I didn’t have a rich father who’d give me a loan; I didn’t have a string of entrepreneurial successes to point to giving me credence to potential investors; I simply had an inner knowing that I CAN.
I found a realtor willing to work with a man who could never ‘qualify’; I talked a seller into holding the paper and selling to me on a land-contract when I could never initially obtain a mortgage; I wrote a business plan that was good enough to convince 10 investors to part with their hard-earned money; I wrote a curriculum that met the standards to earn a license from the State Board of Education; I presented to the local Zoning Board of Appeals and was granted permission to open a Private School abutting a residential neighborhood; and on and on. The endeavor began in January and the doors opened in October of the same year, unthinkable, unimaginable. It grew, prospered, and expanded to Summer Day Camp, Grades Pre-K thru 8th Grade, 3 Campuses, an on-site Barnyard, with a menagerie of animals, swimming pools, and tennis courts. I rarely slept; the gears in my mind worked overtime, 24/7. It was glorious.

My $50 grew to more than 6 figures. Sadly it all ended,
but that is a whole other story.

I found myself single again and no longer a Headmaster of a private school in 1987. I was open to finding a new way to reinvent myself. BANG! WHAM! ALAKAZAM! I showed up at a scrabble event on a February morning in a Snow Blizzard in Allen Park, Michigan. I had come here for an entirely different reason. But I was smitten by what I saw and a new PASSION was ignited within me.
I began playing Club Scrabble and found myself loving the experience and totally surprised at how much I didn’t know. As I learned new words and strategies, each addition created a desire within to learn another, and another, and another. I began compiling lists and marketing them. I invented WHIZ CARDS and became a reseller of boards and clocks and tiles. I even became a custom board builder for a few years. I became a club director and initiated more than a dozen clubs and locations in Michigan between 1988 – 1995. In the years since I have directed thousands of club meetings and more than 250 sanctioned tournaments. I continue to write my daily blogs, create countless scrabble study tools, and teach the online class ‘SCRABBLE 101’.

Can you spell P-A-S-S-I-O-N ?

(SCRABBLE is a Trademark)

WEDNESDAY
7/8/2020
TOP 10 WISH-LIST of the average club scrabble player.

#10 Comfortable sized scrabble tile bags; Not so small that one loses time off their clock when they have to work hard at scrunching their large had into a tiny bag -or- not so large that at the end of the game some letters seem to hide-out in the deep corners of oversized bags.

#9 Wishing that the fashion industry develop a line of clothing in consideration of the specialized needs and comfort of scrabble players. Persons who typically spend 7 and more hours a day sitting at the scrabble table require greater consideration for aeration down there and padding in the seat of their costume.

#8 A friendlier ZYZZYVA. The wonderful word anagrammer that was bought by NASPA from its inventor was altered so that the average user cannot reap all the benefits. They went ahead and limited used to print no more than lists of 200 words long. Then they require us to buy an annual membership in order to use that bastardized version. Shame, shame. Restore ZYZZYVA.

#7 Fresh Meat. That’s the term endearingly bestowed upon the newbies who show up to play with us. We actually love them and try to create an atmosphere where they will thrive. BUT it all depends on their attitudes. No one ever promised the transition from the novice player to a club player to be easy. There’s a lot to learn . . . but that’s a big part of the fun to be had.

#6 PROTILES and DIGITAL TIMERS. The quality of the equipment used during play makes a more pleasurable playing experience for all concerned. PROTILES are double-molded and the lettering on the tiles never fades like the screen-printed tiles. Digital timers provide time readouts to the exact second.

#5 Reliable Heat & Air-Conditioning. The amenities are of prime importance when the heat of competition is ever-present. With that said, clubs have been known to play in unreasonable circumstances: Heat of 100+; Cold of 50 and less; backed-up toilet water flooding the floor; delayed arrivals during snow blizzards and more.

#4 SCREENING FOR PYSCO TYPES. Not that it happens very often but there have been people who have personal issues who have enrolled and shown up in our community. People who have to WIN so badly that they’ll cheat or be so frustrated after they LOSE that they’ll throw their scrabble board.

#3 TASTY NUM-NUMS. Many of the clubs out there provide finger foods and drinks. Therefore there should be some standards to avoid smudging chocolate or peanut butter on the tiles or spilling beverages onto the equipment. It is also the case that most items provided are generally unhealthy: too much sugar and too many calories.

#2 LIGHTING, QUIET, COMFORTABLE CHAIRS, & SMOOTH TABLES. Have you ever cut your finger or hand on a sharp screw or molding on a table? Have you ever sat on a chair too low for the table in front of you? Have you ever been unable to think because the volume from the group next door is blearing? Have you ever tried to see the board and your tiles through dim, romantic lighting?
Enough said.

AND THE #1 Item is
HONEST, ACCURATE ADJUDICATION
.

(SCRABBLE is a Trademark)

 


TUESDAY
7/7/2020
WHOEVER DID THIS WAS SMART ENOUGH
There’s a word used in scrabble™ circles that is relatively new as far as words go. There are many new words that pop up in all different languages that are pop culture terms or slang. But the particular word I’m thinking of doesn’t fall into either of those categories. It is a word of endearment and a word of acknowledgment. It’s the only word of its kind in scrabble™. But as special as the word is, it is unacceptable to play this word during play.

The word is ‘GIBSONIZE’.

I don’t have a story to tell you about the first time the word was coined but I can tell you a bit about what it means and why it is such a special word.
It’s all about an extraordinary scrabble™ player named David Gibson. David was born in February of 1951. After college, he became a Math teacher and Professor. He played his first scrabble™ tournament in March of 1986 and earned an initial rating of 1700, way beyond the top ranking of most in the field. If you’re a club or tournament player you know the difficulty to win a tournament and even when you do, the prize money is meager compared to other tournaments of skill.
David passed on November 22, 2019, at the age of 69. I had the personal pleasure to meet David at a tournament in Cleves, Ohio in June of 1987. He was such a gentleman, very classy. He shared his knowledge with others and was an inspiration to all teachers.
David’s rating over his 33 years of play never dipped below 1700. His final rating was 2200, unimaginable. And while most of the other top earners in the game have won $10,000 — $40,000, David’s life earnings topped $175,000.
David was soooooo goooood that it was common in tournaments for him to amass an insurmountable lead over his opponents, that way before the tournament ended, no one in the pack could even catch him.
That’s where the word GIBSONIZED was born. Today when any player earns an insurmountable lead over all the other players, the tournament director will declare that player to be GIBSONIZED (the WINNER before playing all of his games). The director will then alter the final parings so that the remaining players are competing with one another for 2nd Place, 3rd Place, etc.

Being GIBSONIZED is a distinction and the highest of honors.


MONDAY
7/6/2020
HAS THE JURY REACHED A VERDICT?
In the matter of players achieving expert status in the competitive scrabble™ community, the verdict is that you are unlikely to get to the Winner’s Circle without a heavy dose of word knowledge and board strategy. (Not the usual vocabulary that you pick up from reading literature, but the ‘scrabble™ jargon’ used to enable you to HOOK words so they can play on the board.)
Where does one obtain that knowledge? Is there a book called ‘SCRABBLE™ FOR DUMMIES’? Not exactly. The closest you can come to a book is an online class called ‘SCRABBLE™ 101’. It has assisted hundreds of wannabes to move up in the ranks and achieve 15 Minutes of Fame.
Competitive scrabble™ is not a game for the faint-of-heart. There are more than 175,000 words in the OWL (Official Scrabble Dictionary).
One of the ways I learn more words is by simply picking a letter and then devote a weekend to it. For instance, this past weekend was spent with 5-Letter-Words containing a ‘J’. Some of the more unique words I learned were ‘KOPJE’ ‘QAJAQ’ and ‘THUJA’. It’s the lesser-known words that will most likely draw a challenge from your opponents.
Did you know that in the average game each player only takes 13 – 17 turns. So If your opponent loses a turn due to a bad challenge, they will be losing between 6% to 8% of their score. That helps turn you into the WINNER.
There are many people who like to play but are not competitive. They just like to find common words on their racks and figure out how to play them. They will rarely beat you if you are clued into the basics. BUT BEWARE! When you know the basics, most of your friends and family members will no longer choose to play with you. They see you as being too good. But have no fear. There is a whole scrabble™ community out there that is waiting for you to show up. They crave new opponents.

Want info about Scrabble 101 or how to find clubs across the country
or around the world?
Contact me: JFTSOI.MOSS@gmail.com


SATURDAY
7/4/2020
INDEPENDENCE
Being your own person is a great feeling, especially when you are a whipper-snapper and revolting, getting out-on-your-own, feeling all the JOY by doing it ‘MY WAY’.
Unfortunately, we all learn some startling, hard lessons when we fall out of the nest, encounter many unexpected bumps in the road, and are taken advantage of by some cons and low lives.
It is often hard to admit that if we had it to do over again we would have done things differently. This is when we have the opportunity to pick ourselves up, brush ourselves off, and start all over again.

At times like this we realize that we should have had a plan.

  • At times like this we realize that we should have listened to some of the warnings from those who are wiser and more experienced than ourselves.
  • At times like this we know that we should have had munitions on our persons to deal with those we encountered who tried to take advantage of our station.
  • When I first started out on the road to compete in the scrabble™ world there were no online classes like ‘SCRABBLE™ 101’. There wasn’t even an ‘online’.
  • When I first started out on the road to compete in the scrabble™ world there wasn’t yet such a thing as an ‘anagrammer’. One had to look words up one-at-a-time, manually.

STEMS had recently been invented. No one was making and selling these study tools and the EXPERTS who knew about these aides were reluctant to share with any would-be contenders.
Being a trained and documented educator, I took the task on my own shoulders and corroborated with some of the best players to develop my agenda to guide me in the production of useful tools.
I enjoy my independence and take full advantage of using it to explore and create tools and strategies to advance the ability and performance of all players. We only become a truly great player by building the skills that enable us to WIN over other great players.

If you want my assistance, call me: (949) 510-1673 JFTSOI.MOSS@gmail.com

 


7/3/2020
Friday
PICK YOUR POISON
When it comes to stocking your arsenal with words to play at the scrabble board there are so many different directions to take.  When you are first starting out you’ll want to nail down the 2s, the top 10 STEMS, and other basics.  But then a time will come when you want some variety in order to keep things interesting.  If you’re like me and many other players you’ll know exactly what your weaknesses are.  One of my weak points is when my rack has multiple A’s.  Hence, I will create aides that focus on my weakness.  Other times I have a curiosity that needs my attention.  It’s not necessarily a weakness, but we can all become better with different options.                                                                                              This morning I woke up wondering about the letter ‘J’.  That was enough to start me out in search of a list including all the words with a ‘J’.  I knew it would be a lengthy list, so I designed the task so I could break the list into pieces should I become bored or overwhelmed mid-list.  I just hate it when I am deep into a project and feel compelled to complete it, and I can tell that the project will take many more weeks or months.  So here’s what I undertook today:

I worked several hours and still am working on the 4-Letter words with ‘J’.  I may change my original plan and stop after I have all the 4s.  Then I’ll create a new file for the 5s, 6s, and 7s.  I’ve learned that I should never make any file too long because then it will not easily travel via email from me to you.  I create my files on my MAC using Keynote which is similar to Power-Point on PCs.  But when I send files I always convert them to PDF format first.  I find that I learn new words as well as the many words I already “sorta know” when I do these projects. 

I highly recommend that you give it a try when you are bored
with nothing much to do.


THURSDAY
7/2/2020
WHY STUDY 6s – 8s?
If we were to make a list of priorities, the 6s-to-8s would not rank at the top of the list, BUT that is not to suggest that those words, especially on a STEM list of 6s-to-8s are anything to yawn at.  As all players know, at times you’ll have a great UNPLAYABLE bingo sitting there in plain sight.  It is most likely unplayable because it doesn’t hook to the beginning or end of any of the words on your board.  Here’s where a little extra word power can come in very handy.  There may be one or more letters on the board that could accommodate your rack of 7 tiles playing through a tile, creating an 8-Letter-Word.  That’s why I spend time creating 6s-to-8s STEM Video Flashcards.  This is one efficient way to familiarize myself with so many commonplace 8s.  See a sample of one of my cards.        

           

RETINA is the 3rd of 100 commonly studied STEMS.  If you are intending to study the stems, you’ll want to focus on the TOP 10.  Study the 6s-to-7s first.  Once you are comfortable with those, move on to the 6s-to-8s.  The TOP 10 in order include

  1. SATINE
  2. SATIRE
  3. RETINA
  4. AINERS
  5. SENIOR
  6. TONIES
  7. SANTER
  8. SINTER
  9. TONERS
  10. EASTER

Now You Know What You Need to Know!


WEDNESDAY
7/1/2020
CONSIDERING A DICTIONARY CLOSURE
With the 4th of July weekend coming, leaders are being overly cautious and taking extreme measures to assure people for their safety from COVID-19. County doctors and nurses have been given lists of activities that could be closed down in an effort to protect the public. In many instances, the lists were so long that many of those responsible to check those lists were [overwhelmed and simply checked off ALL the boxes. The OSPD6 was on that list. Who knew?
A car was set on fire by a disgruntled scrabble™ player after losing a game when he lost his challenge on the final play of the game by his opponent. The word challenged was ‘STRIGILS’ through an ‘I’ between two triples, for 149 points. The funny thing was that earlier last week he had gone to his dentist where the dentist used a strigil on the same player’s teeth. 
The expansion of the use of Contact Tracers in an effort to identify and war against Covid-19 created at least one huge AHA in the scrabble™ community. Taking a closer look at the role of Contact Tracers there was an obvious and simple segue identify and recruit scrabble™ enthusiasts from within the general population to play at local clubs and tournaments. DUH!

June 30 was National Corvette Day.

The article above was all Fake News except for the blurb about the Corvette.


TUESDAY
6/30/20
MAKE ME PROUD
Actually, make yourself proud. The way you do that is by staying true to yourself. If you’d rather be playing golf or backgammon, tell me thanks but no thanks, and don’t spend your time on scrabble™ when your passion is something else.
You see, playing scrabble™ well is not a part-time passion. You can still play every now and then for the fun of it, but you’ll never become a real competitor with a part-time effort. Every day players who are trying to rise in the ranks are busily learning new words, studying stems, identifying anagrams, reading the official rules, and developing winning strategies. If you are not doing those things . . . you are losing ground.
Get on track. You begin by making a resolution, not like the New Years’ Resolutions that evaporate a week or two after the year begins. You make a declaration that you’ll dedicate a minimum of 15 minutes a day to some form of scrabble related learning and follow-through.

Tomorrow is the beginning of a new month. It’s a great time for a new start to a new effort.

Just Do It.


MONDAY
6/29/2020
YOU GOT THIS
When a challenge comes along we have a variety of choices. Some people experience fright and flight, they turn their backs and walk away. Others turn to a friend or mentor seeking help to confront the challenge (two heads are better than one). Still, others take a deep breath and step into the arena on their own.
There is no shame in failure. Actually, there are many lessons to be learned in the process of doing, even when we don’t achieve our goals. The processes used by all the scientists throughout history included many hypotheses and failures on the road to learning and discovering successes.

  1. Define your GOAL.
  2. Create a PLAN and a PATH FOR DISCOVERY.
  3. Establish a REGIMEN.
  4. Take a STEP and keep on stepping forward.
  5. REVIEW your plan and MEASURE your progress.
  • Be true to your journey.
    Build in a support system to bolster you when the going gets hard.
  • DO NOT SABOTAGE YOURSELF with negative self-talk when the going becomes rough.
  • Stay focused.

EXPRESS YOURSELF!
Recommit yourself to the task.
Take another step.


Meet my alter-ego: LETTERMAN
SUNDAY
6/28/2020
YOUR BEST IS YET TO COME
Are you a coaster? I’m 77 and have been semi-retired for nearly 30 years. If I had just coasted since back then I’d be penniless and most likely brain dead.
I think of so many of the stories we hear about the people who win the LOTTOs. The facts show that a large number of those lucky folks who won MILLIONS now are broke and broken. The broken did not know how to manage their fortunes and saw the money as their opportunity to get out of the RAT-RACE, get off their TREAD-MILL, and enjoy the days of their lives. They became coasters.
No matter the size of your fortune, if all you do is coast, your fortune evaporates in proportion to the size of your fantasies.
Scrabble™ competitors know well that coasting does not work in club and tournament circles. It’s much like a bicycle race. If you worked your hardest to push yourself to the front of the pack and then decide to let up and coast, you’ll sadly experience the pack creeping up in your rear-view mirror. And if you don’t quickly get back to the task at hand, you are passively inviting defeat.

Keep your pedal to the metal.

All coasters are not necessarily in a state of atrophy. They may have retired from a life they have pursued in an initial career; and now they are exploring or flopping over into a new career. That pretty much describes me and so many others. The degrees that I earned are in Education. I used them to teach in public schools and then to found and lead a private school for nearly 20 years. And while I’ve spent the last 30 years doing other works and projects, I haven’t strayed too far from Education, still using a lot of the skills which I learned.
Keep your eyes forward. Opportunities abound everywhere. A glorious idea will show itself when you least expect it. And while you have all those successes in your past; don’t sell yourself short. Your BEST is yet to come.

 


SATURDAY
6/27/2020
THE MORE YOU KNOW, THE MORE YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW
Ain’t it the truth? Just when I learn a new word it hits me how surprised that I somehow didn’t know that word. I really hate it when my opponent plays a four-letter word against me and I don’t know it. Too often I think it’s a phony and call ‘CHALLENGE,’ only to learn a few minutes later that it is acceptable.
From that kind of experience I have learned that one is more likely to win a challenge against the highest-rated players with a lesser-known 4, 5, or 6 letter word than a bingo. The ‘mavins’ tend to put most of their focus on bingos.
If you’re up to seeing and learn words that you most likely don’t know, click on the link on the left-hand side of this page ‘WORD OF THE DAY’, http://just4thespellofit.com/word-of-the-day/. These lesser-known words are a perfect recipe to put your opponents onto shaky ground. Then once your opponent thinks you know piles of words like these they’ll respect the words you play. A big part of competitive scrabble relates to perception. Use it to your advantage.
Begin to build your vocabulary at a place where you can feel comfortable. Let’s look at all the THREE letter words. YOU and I KNOW ALL tHE THREEs, Right?

Do you know that there are 1,024+ 3-Letter-Words?

Now, do you still think that you KNOW all of them? How about these?
ADZ, AJI, AUK, BOA, BRR, CAF, CRU, CWM, CUZ, DAK, DOH, DUM, EAU, EEW, ETH, FAH, FOO, GIF, GRR. GYP, HAO, HMM, HOO, HYP, IGG, KEP, LAH, LUD, MEH, MIM, MUX, NTH, OIK, OOF, OUD, PAK, PHO, PYX, REI, REZ, ROO, SAU, SEG, SEZ, SOC, SUK, TSK, URD, YOB, XED

If one of these words looks familiar to you, that’s not KNOWING it. Knowing a word is that it is automatic, without a doubt.
To get to KNOW a word you have to develop a relationship with it. WRITE IT on a list. Put it onto a flashcard. Play it in a game when the opportunity arises. Take it home to dinner and introduce it to members of your family. Recognize it in a room filled with other words.

Sound silly?   That’s what the mavins do.


FRIDAY
6/26/2020
CREMATION PLANS
If you’re not ready to end it all, give up the ghost or throw in the towel this might be the perfect time to redouble your efforts, commit to enjoying the journey to improve your scrabble™ skills.
Homebound people everywhere are turning off their TV sets and turning to things more challenging, providing a sense of accomplishment that comes with completing incremental achievements. As in developing word knowledge and power.

  • Set a goal for tomorrow (Example: Learn 5 new words, heavy with vowels).
  • Create a plan for the day.
  • Up by 9 AM
  •  10 AM morning session
    • Write down these five words on a sheet of paper.
      AUREI; URAEI; AIYEE; OIDIA; AECIA
    • Look up their meanings in the OSPD6.
    • Create flashcards: Letter alphabetically on front; word on the back.
    • Write each word 10 times.
    • Look at and memorize each flashcard (Total of 10 minutes)
  • Go do whatever you normally do in the morning
  •  2 PM (15 minutes) Review cards and write the words 10 times.
  • 8 PM (15 minutes) Review cards and write the words 10 times.
  • Bedtime. (5 minutes) Review flashcards.

How did you do?  
Will you remember these 5 words in the future?

As long as you are still hanging out on the planet, keep growing your memory and knowledge.

You Can Do It.


THURSDAY
6/25/2020
LET’S TAKE IT EASY AND CHOOSE A COMFORTABLE STRATEGY
In previous blogs, I’ve suggested an aggressive approach to studying and growing your word power and style of learning. While pushing you in that direction I know very well that most folks like you have busy lives and have their own priorities. I know that it is really hard to do even half of what I’ve asked of you and others. Only about 1 in every 50, the two percenters, call me and talk about the regimen I impose upon my students in ‘SCRABBLE™ 101’. So, I’m going to suggest an entirely revamp here, a change, of course, a drastic change in the required actions, a friendlier path.

  • To begin with, I’ll reduce the number of sessions from 21 to 5.
  • Next, I’ll schedule each session for 1 per week, with the flexibility for you to work on the session on the weekday of your choice.
  • For expanding your word knowledge we’ll depend on only learning new words from a list of words, new to you, played by your opponents at scrabble clubs or on words-with-friends.
  • I’ll ask you to create a list of the 5 Biggest Challenges, your weaknesses, that you face playing the game of scrabble™,
  • And I will create a plan designed according to your needs.

How would that work for you?

Now, allow me to point out that while you and I are waltzing through our study regimen all the serious scrabble™ players in the ranks will be doing what they do: studying a wide variety of scrabble skills and the words that reflect those categories plus learning many lists of words seldom played by their opponents, in anticipation of playing them against you, and drawing your challenges.

How do you fell about that?

The truth is when you take it easy, even when you’re using a relaxed regimen, you are losing ground to the go-getters in the ranks.

The question you have to ask yourself is . . . “How do I want to show up at the table for a scrabble™ competition”?

The scrabble train is always in motion, moving forward.

  • Are you standing at the station watching pass by?
  • Are you riding on a slower train on a parallel track?
  • Or are you going to get on the train and be ‘ALL IN’?

WEDNESDAY
6/24/2020
IF IT QUACKS LIKE A DUCK
PEOPLE sometimes look at my Word-Of-The-Day list, http://just4thespellofit.com/word-of-the-day/, and ask me why they would want to learn some of the words that I highlight? GOOD QUESTION. My reason isn’t usually about just the word itself. Many times I’m thinking beyond the word. For example, take the word-of-the-day on Tuesday, June 23rd, INFULA.

  • First of all, I think that most of my opponents wouldn’t automatically recognize it as a word. They’d have to pause and think about it (consuming some number of seconds off their clock). And maybe opponents might challenge my play, then lose a turn.
  • Secondly, most opponents probably don’t know the plural hook (E). I’m setting myself up for a potential next play.
  • Third, the letters in ‘INFULA’, can be rearranged to play through another letter which might be sitting on the board: INFULA + T = ANTIFLU;
    INFULA + G = GAINFUL; INFULA + E = INFULAE; INFULA + P = PAINFUL

While seeing INFULA on my list and memorizing it is better than nothing, it’s much more valuable when you look more deeply at each entry. That will make your learning experience more dynamic.
Every WORD deserves your thorough attention and scrutiny. Take another look. Look at words from different angles Look for its anagrams and sub-anagrams; recognize the potential hooks and extensions.

QUACK, QUACK.


TUESDAY
6/23/2020
WHATEVER YOU DO, DO IT GOOD.
Sometimes I experience having a sore tongue. Okay, more than sometimes. Every now and then it occurs when I eat ‘HOT’ food. It frequently happens when I drink ‘HOT’ coffee. But too often I do it to myself, biting my tongue, trying to hold back from saying something to scrabble™ players whom I observe at clubs.
The event usually involves some of the newest club players. The circumstances are usually similar. The newbie is being gregarious, meeting new people, and sharing their exuberance. Next, they are talking about all phases of the game and because they are new to club play, the newbie begins asking advice from their new friend/s. If there are 10 club players present and I were to rank them 1 – 10 by their knowledge and playing ability, the newbie usually chooses to ask for guidance from #8, #9, or #10.
Part of the reason for that is that the top-rated players are usually less social and gravitate to the other higher rated players. A bit snobbish.
If you were planning to invest your hard-earned money, would you look for guidance from a friendly person you met while grocery shopping -or- would you seek a financial advisor?
If you need a car repair would you seek assistance from a new car salesman -or- would you hunt down a certified mechanic with a long list of references.

I’m sure you get it.

I’m perplexed why newbies take the advice seriously from anyone other than club directors or someone suggested by the club director. When I do something I want to do it right and find success. When you learn from a novice, you learn many of their bad habits. DON’T DO THAT.
WARNING! BEWARE! Just because someone is a director it doesn’t mean that he/she is a good teacher. Make sure that the relationship is constructive. When you are starting out on any endeavor, you deserve a good start.

 


MONDAY
6/22/2020
DOERS GET MORE DONE
If you are like other scrabble™ players, there have been many times when you wished that your memory was just a little bit larger, that you were just a little bit smarter, that you were just a little bit luckier.
Just in case you didn’t already know . . . THE MORE YOU KNOW, THE LUCKIER YOU BECOME.
That’s where DOING comes into play.
Thinking about DOING and wishing about DOING does not work. It’s the actual DOING that counts and makes the difference.

Now that I have your attention I’ll tell you the rest of the truth. There is DOING and then there is DOING THE RIGHT WAY. Don’t waste your time and energy trying this and that or asking some friend what they do.
Create a customized plan with an informed plan to learn the WHAT. Create a place that is conducive to study with all the necessary tools to do the job, the WHERE. Develop a very specific schedule: Day and Time of Day, the WHEN.

JUMP IN. DO.

  • Tell someone of your intention. Be accountable to yourself and this someone.
  • Outline the pieces of the game which you will study.
  • Put them in an order of priority and create a calendar with a proposed timeline.
  • Review the timeline at designated intervals.
  • Be flexible to allow alterations of the timeline.
  • Your regimen should be daily for a minimum of 21 Days. It takes 21 consecutive days to develop a HABIT. BE COMMITTED.
  • Measure and evaluate your progress. DO NOT compare your growth to others. Chart your emerging skills.

If you don’t know where or how to begin, seek a class like SCRABBLE 101 to show you the way: JFTSOI.MOSS@gmail.com

 


SUNDAY
6/21/2020
My Fathers’ Day Rant
THE RUBBER-BAND DILEMMA; WE’VE GOT A REAL PROBLEM
Sometimes thinking can really shake up, shaping and changing the world in your own mind. The changes happening in real-time might be very good, but coming to grips with the part you played in the past can be potentially unsettling and devastating.
I’ll begin by explaining what I call ‘The Rubber-band Dilemma’. The way I see it, we are all born pretty much the same, lovely, cute, and other than carrying some physical and mental genes from our parents we’re all perfect and pliable.
To a major extent, our future learning begins in the hands of our parents and the influences of the villagers who will interact with us directly or those who already have a significant influence upon our nuclear family.
We are all tiny rubber-bands. Now, rubber-bands are not all exactly the same. Some are thicker and others are thinner; some are more fixable and others are more rigid; some are longer and some are shorter, and they come in a rainbow of beautiful colors.
Us, being the rubber-bands, we must stretch whenever we learn things and have life experiences. While all this learning and stretching is happening, some of the basics which we learn occurred at our very beginnings, when we hadn’t stretched much at all. I’ll call this early stage ‘OUR CORE BELIEFS’. As we grow older and more learned, when the stretching becomes tougher, we sometimes become tired or lazy or simply lost our focus. When that happened we slacken and our stretchiness relaxed and we returned to the size and shape of our core.
Unfortunately, our core values my not be the ones we want, the ones we’ve developed on our own through hard work and simply evolving. Unfortunately, our core values are things instilled within us by ancient/outmoded thinking that were useful for survival when our ancestors lived in caves, trusting no one outside of our clan.
We all have experienced the battles with our inner demons who gnaw at us when we push the boundary and work to grow into enlightened beings. It’s the old cartoon with the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. Both are whispering in your ears, trying to influence us to do their bidding. It can be a very powerful struggle to assert yourself objectively.
It is declared over and over again by all ‘sides,’ “WE ALL WANT THE SAME THINGS”. (Peace; Love; Freedom to live our lives.) But we all have different cores and so many WORDS mean different things to different people.
Ancient instincts and habits and suspicions and irrational prejudices, and mythical beliefs still influence the actions of many, still today. Large numbers of these individuals remain blinded by the teachings that live in their cores. They honestly believe that 2 + 2 = 5. They believe that their faith will protect them from being infected from Covid-19, so the walk the streets without face masks and gather in large crowds of the clansmen. Those rubber-bands have been ‘CAREFULLY TAUGHT’ lessons like: ‘WE’ are the chosen people and all others who are different from us are the enemy.
If you live in the US you see it spouted from the WHITE SUPREMACISTS. You see it in the tweets and actions of POTUS and many other elected leaders.
But don’t be fooled, it’s not just here. It’s alive and well in pockets around the entire globe. And if we get to Mars it will live there too. It seems to me that it is an unfortunate piece, a built-in feature that we humans are afflicted with.
And so we fight on for Justice; we fight on to find Fairness; we fight the bigots and the haters. We work to provide a More Perfect Union; we work to root out the Evil; we march to display our desire for peace and happiness.
BUT that is not enough. We’ve marched so many times before. We’ve uttered the words,’NEVER AGAIN’. We’ve fought wars. We’ve built monuments.
We’ve declared that we’re now at WAR with an invisible enemy, COVID-19. Men and women are working feverishly to find a vaccine to inhibit and/or demolish it.
We need to do the same to eliminate racism. We need a vaccine that when injected into the brain will vanquish that point where bigotry and discrimination live. We must root it out.
We must sever the rubber-band and never be drawn back to the old ways again.

And be allowed to play scrabble in peace.


SATURDAY,
6/20/2020
Stuart Freedman Colby would have been 78 today had he lived.
Happy anniversary to my daughter Stacy and her husband Dan Schwartz.

People who yap, yap, yap at us are sometimes said to be running at the mouth.  I’m rarely accused of that.  But I’m guilty of running on with my fingers.  Today’s blog is my recap of my version of SPRING 2020.

WATCHING THE WORLD GO BY
Its been three months now since the first decree was issued for sequestering in our homes and social distancing due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.
It was made clear via the edicts that in order to remain safe, away from the virus, that one should stay away from others who may be contagious through social distancing. But we could not tell by looking at any person whether that individual was a carrier. It was clearly a war against an invisible enemy.
In the beginning, it was a novel experience, not an overwhelming request So like many others I headed to the market in the late evening, to avoid daytime crowds, to purchase the necessities to make life livable within the wall of my 800-square foot condo. It was unusual to learn that two of the things with the greatest value, ranked by their sales and flying off the shelves, were toilet paper and water. Within hours these items were swept away by greedy shoppers who perceived the future to include a long stay-at-home period. Other items were soon to be added to a growing list of scarcities.
I think we all expected the quarantine situation to be a brief predicament. But as day after day passed without sight of an end and then became week after week, we all began to feel the pangs of cabin fever and ask ourselves “When will this ever end?” Like others, I looked forward to being the one from my home to make the weekly escape from our compound, to go out to the stores and replenish our food supplies and meds. I took special precautions when going out into the public by wearing a mask and wearing plastic gloves. At first, the streets were basically empty of traffic.
New daily patterns of life emerged. Before mid-March, I enjoyed having two part-time jobs within Laguna Woods Village, where I live. I also directed Scrabble Club #350 on Wednesday evenings nearby at Clubhouse #2. As a result of the pandemic surrounding Laguna Woods Village, the village closed all the programs where people might congregate. That included everything. Therefore my jobs ended and I was furloughed; the scrabble club was suspended with nowhere to meet. My financial circumstance was jeopardized without any hope of when life might normalize again.
Initially, life felt like an extended vacation. I could sleep in late if I chose without having to go to work; I watched endless, mindless TV. Even the NEWS on every channel was repetitive and mindless. The surge in Corona Virus was reported on hour after hour, day after day, and the numbers of illnesses built and soared along with the resulting deaths. From an initial few deaths in mid-March to almost 120,000 deaths today as I write this. And then there were the mindless daily tweets from POTUS who from the very beginning claimed that the virus was affecting only a very TINY portion of the population and the entire panic was due to FAKE NEWS. While health officials were consistent with their warnings, the president poo-pooed them and made light of their warnings. He spoke to the people in his frequent appearances and said he took NO RESPONSIBILITY for the virus, and at the same time did NOTHING to take a leadership role to allay the fears and take actions to meet the cries for help from health officials to trump up a national response.
As EASTER came around the corner on the calendar, POTUS projected that the country could reopen by Easter and churches would be permitted to open to the faithful. It became very clear that there was a clear divide between people of faith and people of science. It’s as if people of faith believe that they are immune from, protected from the virus. Still, while the virus continues to devastate communities across America, the president’s followers do not wear protective masks and shrug off warnings of gathering in large numbers.
For me, life at home has allowed me to expand my opportunity to write. I’ve continued to write my daily blogs with an unbroken string of entries going back to the end of August 2019. Additionally I’ve create endless scrabble learning tools which I post on Facebook, use in exercises for my students as a part of my online class ‘SCRABBLE 101,’ and created tools and booklets for future publication.
I’ve become a more avid reader. In my past, I read a shortlist of different authors. But during this social distancing practice, I’ve become a readaholic, having read more than a dozen books in as many weeks. I’ve watched as many as 12 movies every week as well.
All this sitting around has not been good for my health. I never was one who enjoyed exercise. I counted on my part-time jobs to get me up and out of the house, but that has been eliminated from my daily routine. Every day I think to myself that I need to get out and walk as a minimum, but that’s as far as it goes.
I’ve become fast friends with Jake Tapper, Whoopie Goldberg, and David Muir and have spent great amounts of time with them on a daily basis.
I have had many more conversations with my sister Karen in the past months than she and I had talked over the last dozens of years. We now collaborate on our weekly PODCASTS which are linked on my website. While the focus of the podcasts is scrabble, we touch upon many other of life’s’ lessons.
While I haven’t enjoyed scrabble competition face-to-face, I have been playing many, many games of Words With Friends on Facebook. I really appreciate the time that others share with me there.
While day-to-day life has changed so dramatically for all of us, while trying to be objective and being upset by missing out on highly valued life experiences, there have been some pluses with the new normal.
Many times I think about some friends who are senior to me and how the limits of today’s regimen steal away their days, but realistically at 77 years young, I am in that same circumstance.
Then while all this is a center stage along comes the shift in focus to BLACK LIVES MATTER. As awful as the BLACK deaths are, they were timely. Vivid striking visuals of evil reignited the human fury against abuse of power and the overreaching lawless and brutality against minorities within our communities. Again exposing the unfair practices of the police at a time when the multitudes were sitting there watching their TV. It was a perfect time with a perfect medium which made a dynamic difference. TIMING IS EVERYTHING.
We’re living at a critical moment in time when the people of the United States have an opportunity and an obligation to make a massive statement by doing much, much better, and voting for a change in direction.
I’ve been shaken like so many of you. I’ve looked deeper within myself and examined where I have been while these atrocities have been occurring. I report feeling more than a little guilty about hiding out in the realm of safety instead of rushing in to help. How has that worked? It has only delayed accountability. I plan to do better.


FRIDAY
6/19/2020
PLAY NICE
All that’s necessary is a little common courtesy. These actions are not a part of the official rules but they make a whole lot of difference to the quality of the game.

  • In today’s world, it is accepted that there is NO SMOKING in or around the playing area.
  • Many people are sensitive to strong scents. Be considerate and DO NOT WEAR heavy perfume, aftershave, or other scents.
  • If you bring any kind of beverage to the playing table be certain that it is in NO SPILL CONTAINER.
  • Having food (snacks) at the playing table is frowned upon. Eat-in designated areas only.
  • Scrabble is a quiet game.
  • The conversation should be limited to announcing your cumulative score after each play, making challenges, and calling for and speaking to the Director when there is a dispute.
  • After the game, if you chose to speak with your opponent or anyone else be courteous to others still playing, by taking your conversation outside of the playing room.
  • Most often you may be playing with other peoples’ equipment. Treat it better than if it was your own.

DO NOT put the tip of your pen or pencil directly onto the tiles.
DO NOT move equipment from one table to another.
DO NOT slam the clock, simply tap it when your turn is over.

KNOW THE RULES and follow them. If you don’t know, call, “Director”.

Have fun and promote enjoyment and consideration for others.

 


THURSDAY
6/18/2020
GOOD FEET AND SCRABBLE
If you feel anxious, stressed, or simply suffering from foot pain, it is difficult to focus your full attention on the tiles on your rack and the words hiding among them in plain sight.
Some players I’ve known have taken extraordinary measures to address their individual needs (especially in tournament settings), to address their comfort and underlying conditions. Some of the steps taken have included bringing pillows and/or cushions to sit upon, wearing masks, providing their own lamp or another light source to improve vision, slippers and/or compression socks for aching feet, a fan to cool off, or an extra sweater to beat the extreme air conditioning.
Whatever helps, it is up to you to think ahead and plan for your personal well being. People with special diets or medications have to take responsibility for that too. It is incumbent on you to advise the director before the play begins of your special needs and how you have planned to address them. Most directors will support your conditions.
Players with limited vision or Parkinson’s may also find that they are entitled to an additional 5-minutes of time on their clock in each game.
If you require extra bathroom breaks there are rules to handle your needs too. If it is mid-game the procedure is: after your turn, DO NOT replenish your tiles. Just leave the room (your clock continues to run), go to the bathroom, return, hit the clock and replenish your tiles, and the game proceeds. You may not take your phone, a dictionary, or an anagrammer with you to the bathroom.
I’ve encouraged manufacturers of footwear to create a scrabble shoe. If you feel as strongly as me, contact SKETCHERS or your other favorite shoemaker.

 



TUESDAY
6/16/2020
HOW MANY WORDS DO YOU KNOW?
What I continue to find so amazing is that the average person on the street knows only about 5% of the words in the dictionary.
One of my scrabble friends, Beth Byrne shared the list below. How many of these items were ‘old news’ to you?

1. The space between your eyebrows is called a glabella.
2. The way it smells after the rain is called the petrichor.
3. The plastic or metallic coating at the end of your shoelaces
is called an aglet.
4. The rumbling of the stomach is called a wamble.
5. The cry of a newborn is called a vagitus.
6. The prongs on a fork are called tines.
7. The sheen or light you see when you close your eyes and press your hands against them is called phosphenes.
8. The tiny plastic table placed in the middle of a pizza box is called a box tent.
9. The day after tomorrow is called overmorrow.
10 Your tie toe or finger is called minimus.
11. The wire cage that holds a cork in a bottle of champagne
It is called an agraffe.
12. The ’na na na’ and ‘la la la’ which don’t really have any meaning in the lyrics is called vocables.
13. When you combine an exclamation mark and a question
mark like this ?!) it is referred to as an interrobang.
14. The space between your nostrils is called columella nasi.
15. The armhole in clothes where the sleeves are sewn
is called the armscye.
16. The condition of finding it hard to get out of bed in the
morning is called dysania.
17. Illegible handwriting is called griffonage.
18. The dot over an ‘i’ or ‘j’ is called a tittle.
19. The sick feeling that you get after eating or drinking too much
is called crapulence.
20. The metallic device used to measure your feet at a shoe store is called a Bannock device.

 


MONDAY
6/15/2020
“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the grey twilight that knows not victory or defeat. “ ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Scrabble™ Is such an opportunity. IT IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART.
No matter what the field of interest you pursue, no matter what your level of competence and skill, you’ll most likely find that there are others who know more or have more. Then, assuming you improve your station by reaching the next level there will still be others who still know more and have more.

It is very rare to become the King Of The Hill.
(There is only ONE at any moment)

And if you ever are so fortunate to become the KOTH, you’ll find yourself being pursued by others who wish to knock you off your perch. You may have to work even harder to stay atop than you did along the climb.
In the early 1990s when I was an ambitious newbie I created an intention to become a formidable Scrabble™ player. I studied constantly, I created study tools for myself, and checked in with many of the top players for their guidance and mentoring. I played 1:1 with friends, at clubs, and at tournaments. I played 50+ games every week for years on end.
My very first tournament was in Saginaw, Michigan (1987) when I came away with a rating of 1308 (very novice). Playing at a tournament requires many skills above just playing scrabble™ (focus, intimidation, breathing to name a few).
It took me about 12 tournaments and 27 months until I played in my first National Scrabble™ Tournament where I boosted my rating over 1400 for the first time and won a prize of $350.
Just when you think you’re HOT STUFF and on your way to glory, the roof caves in on you. For me and most others, scrabble™ ratings climb and plummet over and over again. It would take me another 20 tournaments, until November of 1990 in Brantford, Ontario, Canada, where I broke 1500 for the first time (my rating was 1515). That was the first time I thought that I might have a shot to become an EXPERT.

The EXPERT DIVISION usually was made up only with players rated 1800 and higher. Occasionally a lower-rated player was permitted to PLAY-UP.
I set my sites on 1800.
After the tournament in March 1991, in Gatlinburg, Tennessee I achieved a rating of 1571, but after a poor performance a month later in Grand Haven, Michigan I was back down to 1488. Oh so frustrating. I dug my heels even down deeper and renewed my resolve.
In Ann Arbor, Michigan in February 1993 I bounded over 1600, to 1638. With that achieved, I became a bit cocky. Another year plus, in May 1994 in Montreal, Canada I rose to 1687. The next 4 years I bounced up and down like a yo-yo. After playing my 129th tournament in Reno, Nevada on January 18, 1997, I cracked 1700, winning 21 of 32 games and earning a rating of 1721. August 1997 after playing the MASTER’s CHAMPIONSHIP in Cincinnati, Ohio my rating stood at 1761. I was only 39 rating points from my goal of 1800.

I had just spent the summer of 1997 in southern Michigan. Living in a 32’ RV in Newport Beach, California, I had driven cross-country to Michigan to help celebrate two weddings. My daughter Stacy married Dan Schwartz in June and later in August my daughter Sue married Don Sutton. Besides the weddings, I played endless scrabble™ with old friends and attended tournaments in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Portland, Oregon on my way home. I turned 55 just after the Cincinnati event and found myself driving on Highway 55 on my 55th birthday,
Can you spell ‘slippery slope’?

When you sign up to play in a tournament you never know exactly where you’ll be grouped (Division 1, 2, 3 or top, or bottom in a division) If you are the top player in a division, your rating is higher than those below you and the expectation is that you will beat those challengers. Your rating will drop every time you lose to a lower-ranked player.
After achieving my 1761 rating, in the next dozen tournaments, I was frequented, I found myself to be the top or near the top-ranking player in my division. My dismal performances as such caused my dramatic drop in my ranking. That’s when some of us succumb and say things like, “It’s just a game.”

Today after 319 tournaments played my rating is 1437. (I, of course, think that I am underrated and much better than that.) Yet I have so many memories of flirting with greatness, playing against several of the elite players from around the globe. (David Gibson, Mark Landsberg, Joel Sherman, Joe Edley, Chuck Armstrong, Rita Norr, Mohan Chunkath, and Gwen Rae)

Aim for the Stars, if you miss you could still land on the Moon.


SUNDAY
6/14/2020
FOUR LITTLE KNOWN SCRABBLE ITEMS

  • An endless number of statistics regarding the scrabble™ play of tournament and the individuals who participate are collected, stored and available for viewing at https://www.cross-tables.com
  •  
  • Did you know that there is an APP called ULU available to look up all the words in the OWL?
    https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ulu-ultimate-lookup-utility/id1281832323
  • SCRABBLE™ GO is available to play on your phone.
    http://www.icontact-archive.com/archive?c=1384631&f=6038&s=10116&m=288131&t=650b9db00f5228ee57432048f1967e4ef1b454e708354ae751c2b95d07c97caf

Beer/Scrabble – one and the same

 

SATURDAY
6/13/2020
DEATH COMBOS
Have you noticed that there are certain letter combinations that are especially difficult to play? That’s because there are not many words that contain those groups of letters together in words. Don’t waste time attempting to play those tiles. Prepare yourself because you will have them on your rack and you’ll have to deal with them.
Death Combos include II; QW; UU; VU; V V; WU; WW; YU; and YY.
You may have other combinations that plague you. (I have a tough time with AA.) If you have other combos that cause your mind to go blank, add them to the list.

Let’s deal with them. Consult your OWL or OSPD and write out a list of 5 or more words that contain each of your ‘DEATH COMBOS’.
Put them on hardcopy flashcards or video flashcards. Study and learn these words. Be on automatic if and when you have these combos on your rack. If you can play the COMBO or at least one of the two tiles . . . DO IT.
IF you have a ‘DEATH COMBO’ + a 5-Letter-Word, DO NOT play the 5-Letter-Word, keeping the death combo, unless the 5-letter-word scores high points or if it is necessary to block your opponent from scoring big.

You are always playing both offensively and defensively so everything is relative. Sorry, I can’t give you a rule etched in stone; you still have to make the final decision. Make your best guess. If you guess wrong, learn from it and try to not make the same mistake again. BUT if you play a lot of scrabble™ you will make some of the same mistakes again. Don’t beat yourself up.
You always have the option to exchange the Death Combo when it is your turn. At times this is the best option if you’re not far behind in the score or if you’ve tracked and there are several valuable tiles still unseen.


FRIDAY
6/12/2020
HAVE YOU CONSIDERED THE BACK-WAY?
During the first year I began playing at scrabble™ clubs I was definitely the ‘fresh meat’. Even though I had played casually over the year before with family and friends, I was clueless when it came to club scrabble™.
I was a teacher by profession and very stubborn and determined. I really wanted to learn how to play the game well. I wanted to learn how the champs studied and try to rise in their ranks. I asked the directors for tips and I watched the top players in the club play one another. I kept a notebook and at every session, I filled a page with scrabble™ jargon played by others that looked like an alien language to me.

Someone back then gave me a dog-eared copy of a booklet called ‘The Backwards Book’. He suggested that I look at words differently from the way I was used to seeing them on the board and in the OSPD. I thought he was nuts but he was one of the star players in the club.
I remember spending hours and hours at my desk at home looking at the pages and the way the words were organized in The Backwards Book. It was an alphabetical arrangement of all the legal words but they were all in order from right to left, instead of left to right as in the usual dictionary.

At a glance, you saw lists of words that ended the same way. All the words that ended with ‘ful’, ‘ium,’ ‘less,’ ‘ness,’ ‘way,’ etc. Players at the club were always guessing about the words that ended with ‘ING’ (does it take an ’S’ or not? In the backward book, all the words which ended with ‘INGS’ were right there, all together.
It goes without saying that it was one of my favorite study tools. For some reason, the publisher of that book never updated it over the years. Many new legal words, as many as 20,000+ have come into play since that book I used way back then.

About two years ago I remembered the magic in that old book and I tore apart my home looking for my old, outdated copy. It was nowhere to be found. I wrote emails to many of my old friends asking if they remembered the book and if they still had a copy that I might borrow or buy. While many remembered it, no one still had a copy.
That’s when I decided to recreate it. I’m not a programmer so I didn’t know how to create a program to sort the words for me. I told myself that if I were to type all 175,000+ words manually that maybe 5% — 10% of the words might possibly transfer into my consciousness by osmosis. And that is how and when I began.
How long did it take? Can you imagine endless hours, endless day, endless weeks, many months? And then one day about 9+ months later I was finished. At that point, a good friend (a top natch programmer) suggested that during all my typing I most likely made many typos and that would be a shame. The thought of editing the tome manually made my mind spin. So I allow my good friend to proof my book.
I call it a BACKWARDS DICTIONARY but there are no definitions, It is an alphabetized word list of the legal words from the OWL up to 8 letters long, but alphabetized from right-to-left.
It is amazing. My first printing sold out in a few days, hot off the press. My printer has been closed during the COVID-19 Pandemic so I only have a few copies in-hand until he reopens. This is the first time I’ve written about it because I only have 10 in stock. The book sells for $40 + $8 shh. If you want one order on PayPal.
Pay to the account of JFTSOI.MOSS@gmail.com

See a sample column below.

HAWKIE
GOALIE
BELIE
BAILIE
CHALLIE
DUALLIE
BILLIE
GILLIE
GHILLIE
OLLIE
COLLIE
COOLIE
DOOLIE
GOOLIE
HOOLIE
PLIE
CHARLIE
FERLIE
OVERLIE
GIRLIE
OUTLIE
GHOULIE


THURSDAY
6/11/2020
TODAY IS THE DAY TO START (Today is Yesterday’s tomorrow.)
How many times have you said to yourself -or- thought to yourself “ I’ll begin ‘THAT’ tomorrow”?
How many times did that tomorrow never come?
About 48.6% of the time people never take action. About 38.3% of people begin ‘THAT’ tomorrow but lose inertia within the first week. Only 13.1% of people will actually follow through on whatever ‘THAT’ is.
This even applies to pleasurable things.
If you really want something to occur you should

  1. Make a conscious intention for ‘THAT’ to happen.
  2. Write it down on a TO DO LIST on your calendar.
  3. Tell someone about your plan. and 
  4. JUST DO IT!

When you are doing ‘THAT’ the odds of it happening will go up considerably.  Things that reduce the odds of ‘THAT’ happening include but not limited to

  1. The weather
  2. Health issues
  3. Having a flat tire
  4. The dog ate it
  5. Aliens

When the object at hand has to do with developing skills to improve your scrabble™ game, you’ll definitely want to begin TODAY as opposed to TOMORROW. That’s because there is so much to learn beyond the 175,000 legal words. You can compare the journey to master the game of scrabble™ to a journey in the travels of an explorer who plans to travel west. No matter how far west he travels there’s always more west to go.
There are many levels of learning which can compare to the layers in an onion. Just stop and think about the 2-Letter-Words. A first time player arrives at club and I attempt to size him up and assess his skill level. He tells me that he knows the 2s. As we begin to play a game I find him challenging ‘HM,’ ‘EW,’ and ‘XU’. Guess what? He doesn’t know the 2s. He knows some of the 2s. That’s okay; we all have more to learn. But the 2s are an important part of the BASICs. We need the 2s in order to attach the words we find on our rack to the words on the board.
Did you know that EXPERTS sometimes review the 2s? Knowing the 2s is actually not GOOD ENOUGH. It should be a goal of every serious scrabble™ player to MASTER THE 2s, MASTERY looks like something second nature; knowing something without having to think about it and figuring it out.

Do you know all the TWOs?

 


Wednesday
6/10/20
SOMETIMES YOU WIN, SOMETIMES YOU LEARN.
When enthusiastic scrabble™ players first find scrabble™ clubs they often think that their skills are good enough to allow them to become instant winners.
This notion is quickly snuffed out during the very first session.
The problem IS NOT that they are lacking an adequate vocabulary. The challenge IS that there are many word skills that the newbies’ DON’T KNOW THAT THEY DON’T KNOW.
Not to worry. Scrabble™ directors and many players who attend our clubs want the newbies to succeed. We all want new blood in our groups. Scrabble™ clubs and tournaments wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for all the other players. So, most of us take it upon ourselves to teach the ropes to the newbies.
Being a newbie has many frustrations. The first thing is all the ‘LEGAL’ scrabble jargon that litters the board. The common newbie will frequently ask the question, “Is That A Real Word?” Opponents play things like ‘CWM,’ ‘HMM,’ ‘UNMEW’, or ‘QWERTY’, and the newbie will want to just get up and go home.
The good news is that newbies who weather the storm will more often than not turn a corner and become a challenge to others.
One thing that is very hard to learn is that THERE IS VALUE IN EVERY GAME EVEN IF YOU LOSE. There is something to learn from each loss if you take the time to look back with a student’s eyes. It may be a word that is new to you; it may be a hook that your opponent used. Maybe you played a word that opened a bingo line when you could have played somewhere else.
IN THE BEGINNING . . . winning is not the greatest teacher. Do not permit yourself to be defeated by your Win-Lose Ratio. Remember the tortoise and the hare.
If you want assistance, ask the director, or ask me. (949) 510-1673. Don’t waste time creating a plan with the guidance of a mediocre player/friend.

GO FOR THE GOLD!


TUESDAY
June 9, 2020
STUDY AT HOME WHERE PANTS ARE OPTIONAL
Studying to improve your scrabble™ skills can be great fun and you can choose to do it almost anywhere. The tools for scrabble™ are relatively small and portable permitting you to study at home, on the subway on your way to work, in a plane when you’re flying cross-country to a tournament, or while you sit in a waiting room for your doctor, a haircut, or an oil change.
In today’s world, you can use your cell phone to play scrabble™ online against both friends and total strangers. You can carry your tablet with you and study video flashcards to build your knowledge of STEMS or HOOKS or 5-VOWEL-8s.
My old friend, Walter Koniki, of Independence, OH owned Angie’s Pizza for years. He had scrabble™ words that he was studying taped to the ceiling, right above the spot where he stood, tossing pizza dough up in the air.
Another friend, Chuck Armstrong, wrote every legal word on 3 x 5 cards and filed them in a 4-drawer file cabinet that rimmed the perimeter of his living room.
Scrabble™ mavens are creative in the ways they invent to study the arsenal of words that they’ll need to achieve scrabble™ excellence.
It’s up to you. Study early in the morning when you are fresh and alert. Study throughout the day on short breaks in your day to reinforce certain words or concepts. Study during meals at home or out at your favorite restaurant. Study just before bedtime and dream away about words the whole night long.
You can study wearing a tux for some formal affair, in grungy work-clothes while mowing the backyard lawn, at the beach in your bathing suit, or lounging at home with NO pants at all. It’s your choice.
But whatever you do, Study, Study, Study, and improve your skills. Move up in the ranks to outshine your competition.
One DYNAMIC way to get a fast start is to enroll yourself into SCRABBLE™ 101, my online class that will emerge you with lists and exercises and strategies that relate to scrabble. I promise that you’ll learn some things that will cause you to think “AHA, I never thought about that”. I strive to teach you how to see the board and words differently, seeing new ways to achieve higher scores while unraveling racks of letters to identify bingos hiding in plain sight.

You can begin this 21 DAY class TODAY. (Fee: $199).

Call me NOW! (949) 510-1673. Pay via Paypal or with any credit card.


MONDAY
6/8/2020
HE WAS A MAN OF WORDS, MY DAD and HERO
My dad, Jay Harmon Moss, was born on June 8 in 1917, 103 years ago, and passed away on February 3, 2004.
I am his eldest, born in 1942 during the crazy times of the WWII era, in Detroit, Michigan.
The carefree years that accompanied my childhood provided shelter to me that only now can I appreciate. I’ve been awakened by the reality of the events in today’s Pandemic, in today’s Economic Challenges due to the loss of jobs and income streams that people count on, Despotic leaders in the White House and Congress, Injustice personified in the ranks of our police forces (hiding in plain sight).
I find myself wondering . . . Dad, how did you manage to weather the storms that brewed during your lifetime? You were born in the midst of the Spanish Flu Pandemic and became critically ill as a baby. I am proof that you somehow beat that menace but sustained a weakened heart that challenged you again in your senior years. You waded through the Great Depression years helping support yourself and contributing to your family as best you could. You had to work and set aside your personal ambitions of becoming a veterinarian. And then WWII comes along. Your physicality marked you as 4F so you went off to work for the war effort while others went to the front lines.
You were always a hard worker, working long days for minimum wages. I remember you coming home from work, eating dinner, and drifting off fast asleep in your easy chair in the living room. You were a staunch family man. You always demonstrated love and affection for mom and we filled our spare time on weekends with visits to your parents and mom’s parents. Without a profession to rely upon you were always in search of a better job. I had a hard time keeping up with knowing what you were doing and you described yourself as ‘Jack f All Trades, Master Of None’. I loved working alongside of you, holding a flashlight while you repaired jukeboxes, and being your hopper, delivering milk in the wee hours of the morning before the world woke up.

And you were so creative. You wrote so eloquently. Your penmanship looked like calligraphy. You wrote notes and letters and poems. Mom prized the hundreds of poems you showered upon her. At family weddings and other celebrations, you wrote parodies to songs that left every eye in the clan weeping. You celebrated me at my Bar Mitzvah with a new version of ‘Mighty Like A Rose’. You gave a stab at becoming a MusicMan when you and next-door neighbor Paul Courtner collaborated on songs like ‘Doctor, Doctor’.
You were a dreamer and schemer. While working full time with a commute of more than an hour to and from work you taught yourself to become a rabbit breeder. And from the beginning of 1 male and 2 females you built a rabbit herd of hundreds in a matter of months, right there in our garage on Ohio, in Detroit. When the neighbors caught wind of what you were doing (you know what I mean) you moved the herd to a rabbitry in Rochester Hills, MI right along the route to your day job..
Even in the most difficult of times, you managed to keep a positive perspective and believed that ‘THE BEST IS YET TO COME’.
There have been numerous times when I been standing, usually shaving, in front of the bathroom mirror, when instead of seeing myself, you appeared, looking back at me from within the mirror. It’s eerie, but oh so welcoming to be standing so near to you.
I believe that my passion for words is a gift to me from you. Thank you so much.

Happy Birthday, With Love,
#1 Son


SUNDAY
6/7/2020
SEEING DOUBLE
The odds say that if you’re seeing double you have a problem. As a general rule in scrabble™ too . . . having doubles is a curse that gets in your way for finding bingos. I will not deny that there are thousands of words that include 2 of the same letter ie. ABBA; CYCLE; EDDO; WOOFER; AALII. BUT take it from the scrabble™ oddsmakers, your chance to bingo improve dramatically when you are without doubles.
POINT OF OBSERVATION. There’s a fork in the road where we find ourselves split into two camps of players. Some of you who have just read this explanation and warning in a casual manner may have thought to yourself ‘interesting’ . . . and then will continue to do what you’ve always done in the past (play your own style and your own game). OTHERS, having read the exact same explanation, will make a concerted effort to create their future racks without doubles and be satisfied to simply reap the benefits from the oddsmaker’s advice.

IF YOU ALWAYS DO WHAT YOU’VE ALWAYS DONE,
YOU’LL ALWAYS GET THE SAME RESULTS.

I watched two of my former students play a game of scrabble™ at club. John was down in the score by 53 points when he used his BLANK to create the word ‘JU?T’ which scored 23 points. After the game was over I approached John and asked him about that play. He explained that he had had the BLANK for three turns and had not been able to use it. DUH? I asked him how that strategy worked for him? He admitted that it didn’t. The BLANKS are the keys to creating bingos. The rule of the oddsmakers is: NEVER PLAY A BLANK FOR FEWER THAN ’50 POINTS’. John learned that piece of information from me but still becomes impatient when playing the game.

Which is more fun for you? Winning or Losing the game?
Maybe you answer that neither is important, it’s just the fun of the game.
From my perspective, I believe that everyone finds greater enjoyment from Winning vs Losing. I see you beam when you find a great play and earn a large score. I sense your pride when you win the game.
I watch endless players settle into playing mostly the same words week after week because they never attempt to lean even a single new word from the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary. Even when I serve up a ‘WORD OF THE DAY’ on this website, most players never even take a peek. http://just4thespellofit.com/word-of-the-day/

Maybe that’s just a part of Human Nature. (Do as much as you have to do to get by.)  I challenge you to learn just one new word today which will make me or your opponent pause to think if it is acceptable. I invite your competition.



SATURDAY

6/6/2020
AND THEN MIKE BARON SAYS . . .
I’ve referred to Mike Baron in the past. Mike is a college professor and a highly rated scrabble™ guru on the shortlist of noted scrabble™ champions.
When playing the game of scrabble™ at its highest level players look to memory tools to help themselves achieve excellence. There are more than 175,000 words on the OWL (Official Word List) and many strategies players can employ to prompt their own MEMORY and RECALL.
One of the tools that Mike uses so well and has shared with the ranks is the power on MNEMONICS. A mnemonic is simply using a ‘made-up’ word or phrase that will assist you to remember some word, set of words, or some valuable piece of information,
The mnemonic I want you to consider is one that Baron manufactured to help himself remember four key strategies when deciding what to play on each turn.
The mnemonic is ‘SCRABOTI’. Why is this so magical? Good question!
It only becomes magical when you understand the message it holds and when you use that information in plotting your course throughout a game of scrabble™.
Mike uses ‘SCRABOTI’ to remind himself of four important things to remember while he plays the game. (Often in the heat of competition we get caught up in our own minds and lose sight of our strategy. Tools like SCRABOTI can pull us back and help us refocus in the midst of the battle.)
Mike uses successive pairs of letters in ‘SCRABOTI’ to prompt himself to think:
SC = score;
RA = rack leave;
BO = board development;
TI = tile turnover. 
For Mike, these 4 pieces are essential when playing every single turn.
Another player might have the exact same goal but may use a completely different prompt.   The mnemonic itself isn’t important; the job it does is.
The more you personalize your tools, the greater chance they will work for you.
We all probably learned the mnemonic ‘HOMES’ when we were in geography class, studying the Great Lakes: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior.

Always be open to using tools to help you develop your memory.
YOU CAN DO IT.
Check out: https://www.spreaker.com/user/10697139/jftsoi-gary-moss-discusses-strategies-fo


FRIDAY
6/5/2020
A Good Strategy CAN BE OFFENSE OR DEFENSE
One of the GIANTS in the game of competitive scrabble™ is Mike Baron. He has written extensively on the game, having authored a number of articles and books, including Scrabble® Wordbook. A member of the National Scrabble® Association’s first Advisory Board, and a “Johnny Appleseed” ambassador for the game, he was instrumental in helping forge the first World Scrabble Championship and School Scrabble® program.
Besides offering us his own wisdom and guidance, he sometimes plucks the gems from others the quote below:

“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950

Here are just three of the many ideas he has shared over the years.
“(1) Play more tiles at game’s outset in the race for the power tiles (a ? Represents a blank tile): ? ? S S S S J Q X Z.
(2) Play more tiles if ahead thereby more speedily using up your opponent’s comeback ammunition.
(3) Slow down, play fewer tiles, if behind.

I salute Mike and so many of the other players who have promoted the game and raised it to higher levels of play. When I expound on the ‘HOW TO’ of the game I am usually sharing ideas I learned from others, standing on their shoulders adding a bit of my own personal experience.
I’m sure, if you’re a club player you know that in a game between two opponents you find yourself playing both offense and defense. That requires you to possess both sets of skills in order to be successful. There is a delicate balance to do both simultaneously.
Offensively you are always looking for the highest scoring play . . . BUT at the same time, you will try to be careful not to set up your opponent for a huge comeback play. There are many things to consider.
1) Try to avoid serving up a TLS next to a vowel in your play.
2) Try to avoid placing any letter between two TWS or DWS.
3) Play words that can’t take hooks.

My general rules are
1) Never spend your BLANK for less than 50 points. (It is usually the key factor in playing a BINGO).
2) Never spend your ’S’ for less than 25 points.
3) The decision of what tiles to play from your rack on every play includes the consideration of what you might do on your next play (this requires your awareness of the tiles remaining unseen and what you may draw from the tile bag).

THE MORE YOU KNOW, THE LUCKIER YOU BECOME.


THURSDAY
6/4/2020
WITNESS ~ JUSTICE
Every part of our lives are influenced by and subjected to witnessing events and the quality of justice or injustice that prevails.  Yes, even in scrabble™.
All games have RULES. The rules apply to each and every player. In some settings like scrabble™ clubs and tournaments, there are directors who are sanctioned and assigned the obligation of making adjudications when events occur where rules have or may have been violated, broken. Charges for wrong acts are usually made when one of the two opponents in the game, one player calls ‘DIRECTOR’ which summons the director who then investigates, listens to each of the opponents, clarifies the actions and allegations, and then makes a determination according to the Official Rules of The Game.
GOOD OUTCOMES are expected and hoped for, but do not always occur. The director’s investigation of the facts is limited to the testament of the two opponents and others who may have witnesses the allegation. The director’s decision is based on the information he/she can gather. It is not always the whole truth and clear. The bias held by the director will color the adjudication.
I have heard about directors’ calls that I believe are GOOD and others that I find disgusting and in my opinion WRONG.
I myself have directed thousands of club sessions and more than 250 tournaments. Of all the hundreds of adjudications that I’ve made over the last 30 years, the greater majority were easy and direct:

  • Who Plays First?
  • Player #1 has overdrawn 2 tiles when replenishing her rack. What should she do?
  • Our game is over and my opponent went overtime. What is the penalty?

When a director makes a BAD CALL, that director chastises himself/herself, especially if it was during the days before we used computers to adjudicate challenges of words played. I was also the ‘WORD JUDGE’. I used a version of the OSPD to look up challenged words.
When I was called to adjudicate a word. I looked in the OSPD and ruled the word to be UNACCEPTABLE. The player who made the play picked up the word and lost his turn. Later that day that player came to me with a dictionary and showed me that I had GOOFED. His word was acceptable. I apologized profusely but there was no going back and correcting my BAD.
**FOR YOUR INFORMATION. If a director makes a ruling during a club or tournament and you believe that he/she is wrong . . . YOU have the right to ask for a 2nd OPINION from another source.

IT’S IMPORTANT TO HAVE THE SAME JUST RULES FOR ALL.


Wednesday
6/3/2020


TUESDAY
6/2/2020
A CRACKER’S VIEW ON BEING A BLACK SCRABBLE™ PLAYER
I am not Black so this is just one white mans’ opinion. From my experience at scrabble™ clubs and tournaments I have witnessed the scrabble™ community as color-blind. That’s one of the things I enjoy most about organized scrabble™. I’ve met and made friends with people of different colors and cultures whom I may have never met otherwise. We’ve played together, traveled together, and dined together. Some of these friendships blossomed into life-long friendships.
The death of George Floyd and the inequities and injustice it represents anger and saddens me when I think of the implications for my black friends. It leaves me at a loss for what I might say to them to soothe their anguish or make any positive difference. It makes me wonder if I’m any part of the problem.
I’m usually one of those people who remains in the background, expressing disgust at injustice but rarely marching or demonstrating in the streets. I’ve signed petitions and written posts on Facebook expressing my positions. I’m questioning myself today if that alone is enough.
It is obvious to me that the CAN Of Justice has been kicked down the road for 150 years since The Emancipation Proclamation was signed. Some white men in power have taken baby-steps to quell the rumblings along with imposing strong-arm methods to restore order time after time. And they have never created the justice promised in The Bill Of Rights or other beautifully sounding promises in writing that demand to do ‘THE RIGHT THINGS’.
The ‘KNEE’ on George Floyd’s neck was a vivid observation of the ‘KNEE’ that is held against the necks of the non-white constituents living the American Experience. It remains anything but equal and just.
Leaders like so many in positions of power continue to KICK THE CAN and try to keep things under control. They have many reasons for the actions which they take but they all boil down to POWER and MONEY. Most of our leaders in power are so rich and entitled that they have long lost touch with the challenges of living life without food, money, health care, and more. The chasm between the HAVES and HAVE-NOTS continues to grow dynamically.
This Pandemic that we’re experiencing has brought with it unwanted off-shoots shining the spotlight on lack of health care, unemployment, lack of realistic safety nets to ensure that we live in a land which establishes Justice, insures domestic Tranquility, provides for the common defense, promotes the general Welfare, and secures the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity to all of its people.

Oh, what a wonderful world it would be if we could only all live our lives around the scrabble™ board where we could all live equally in peace.


MONDAY
6/1/2020
PROPER NAMES & SCRABBLE™
The rule in scrabble™ is that Proper Names are not acceptable to play unless the word has an alternate definition. When I was growing up the kids in my neighborhood had names like Bill, Jane, John, and Mary. While I was allowed to play BILL and JOHN, Jane and Mary were both unacceptable.
When I began playing club scrabble I knew a lot of people who came from outside the neighborhood. They came from other cultures from all around the world. I never knew people with so many of their names.

When I learned the scrabble™ rule relating to names I had the realization that there were a huge number of names that had other meanings. I have taken the time to make lists of these names/words and now play them and sometimes draw a challenge from an uninformed opponent.

Here is a long list of most of the ‘A’ names that have other meanings. It is well worth your time to consider this.

  • AVA, ABBA, ABBEY, ACE, ACACIA, ADIT, ADAGIO, AERO, ALDEN
  • ABIGAIL, AGAPE, AL, ALAMEDA, ALAN, ALMA, AMBER, AMI, AMIE, AMIN
  • AMICE, ASTER, AMITY, AZURE, ALEC, AURA, AYAH, ALEF, ARTY, ASPEN
  • ALFREDO, ASH, ALPINE, ALASKA, ALBA, ARCHER, ARIA, ARIEL, ANI
  • ARROW, ART, ANGEL, AURORA, ANA, ANNA, AXEL, ALIYAH, AUTUMN

You could google ‘NAMES’ and find lists of other names from B to Z but then you’ll have to look up each name in the OSPD6 to see if it is acceptable to play in the game of scrabble.


SUNDAY
5/31/2020
ARE YOU CONCERNED ABOUT MILD MEMORY LOSS?
Take Action! There are all sorts of pills and potions on the market that promise help in this area. I am not a doctor so I will not endorse any single item but you might ask your primary physician.
I strongly believe that we all possess the ability to hold on to as well as expand our memory by using techniques that have been around for decades. If you are motivated to do so it’s easy to get started.
WHAT SHOULD YOU DO FIRST?
Make a complete list of what you hope to accomplish.
Things like:

  • remember the names of friends and neighbors;
  • remember new words in order to be more successful playing games like scrabble™;
  • remembering general data to become more valuable in the workplace;
  • become more ‘KenJennings-like’ in order to win millions on Jeopardy.

My new and updated online class, Scrabble™ 101, will lead you through 21 steps over 21 Days to provide you with all the tools you need to become a scrabble™ player to be reckoned with.

BEWARE!
After taking the online class, Scrabble™ 101, students often complain that their friends and family members who used to play with them will no longer play scrabble™ with them because they are TOO GOOD.
When you choose to take a class like Scrabble™ 101 you are making a commitment to an ACTION. You are declaring your accountability to me, your teacher. You are committing to 21 Days of lessons and exercises.
I promise that you will rise in the ranks.

  • You will learn what you’ve been doing wrong and make the necessary corrections.
  • You learn things you never knew which were hiding in plain sight.
  • You feel the thrill of learning new skills and using them at the board.
  • You’ll experience the THRILL OF VICTORY more often.

You Can Remember. Allow me to show you how.


SATURDAY,
5/30/2020
LISTEN & SILENT ARE SPELLED WITH THE SAME LETTERS.
And if you find that interesting, you’ll find countless fun facts in the world of words. LISTEN and SILENT are ANAGRAMS (different words that share the same set of letters). They also share four other words with the same set of letters:

  • ELINTS
  • ENLIST
  • INLETS
  • TINSEL

Scrabble players are tougher opponents when they are skilled in finding and using anagrams.

Your opponent makes the first play in the game and puts down the word ‘PLENTY’ at (8D) to (8I). Having the aforementioned rack plus a ‘V.’ Let’s see what we could play.
‘PLENTY’ does not take an’ S” after the ‘Y,’ so let’s look for a parallel play (some word to play horizontally above or below PLENTY.)
Here is where knowing the 2-Letter words is essential. Two of the anagrams above begin with an ‘E,’ which will play under the ‘Y.’ If you only see LISTEN and SILENT, those choices don’t work.
There are other choices. Can you think of one or more?
You can play vertically through one of the letters in PLENTY. There are many, many choices.

By any chance, did you consider a ‘FRONT HOOK’ to PLENTY? ‘A’
You can play any one of several words that have an ‘A.’
One of the things I love about this game is that there are usually multiple choices on every play. You have to survey the situation quickly and not fall into the trap of looking for everything because there is a TIME FACTOR, and your clock is wasting away on your turn. Spend no more than 1.5 minutes of each play to be safe.

Not every word has an anagram. Write down ten words randomly from your dictionary. Look and identify anagrams within them.


FRIDAY
5/29/2020
WHERE DOES INSPIRATION COME FROM?
It was a year after the episode happened that I created The Barnyard Series. And it all occurred in 1991 after a dream of real events that had happened some twenty years earlier.
In one of my actual past lives, I was the owner and Headmaster of Bloomfield Nursery School & Kindergarten, in West Bloomfield, Michigan. I remember myself as being very creative even back then. I was always looking for some way to make my school outstanding by standing out.
The school initially sat upon 5 acres where city living abutted country. I was attuned to the notion that kids loved animals, and we certainly had enough space to create our own little Barnyard.
BUT, I was a City Mouse with this image about a Barnyard. I had been able to meet every challenge during the school’s formation with a degree in business or experience working with zoning boards of the State Department of Education. What could be so tricky in creating a Barnyard?
I had a great friend who was a builder and another who was an architect. Within four weeks, we poured a foundation to support a super-sized garage of 20’ x 40’.
The salesman that sold the school cleaning supplies happened to live on a farm and offed to give the school a pony named Ginger; he even offered to deliver the pony with feed. He provided directions for us to build a corral adjacent to a side door of the garage. My builder was able to create the log fences in about a day. Do you know how much one little pony poops? Would you have any idea what to do with an accumulation of poop? This city mouse was overwhelmed.
I found a few teenagers who lived nearby and employed them to feed and shovel up after Ginger. They did a great job.
A month later, the children were scheduled to take a field trip to a Farm that catered to city kids, teaching them about all the animals. While at the farm, I had an opportunity to speak with farmer McDonald and share my pony and barn experience, I was floored when he made me an offer impossible to refuse. He offered me a goat, sheep, and piglet. It also included a dozen chicks and a couple of ducks with enough feed for a week. He suggested that I come back to the farm on the weekend, early on Sunday. Sounded cool, right?
Being the City Mouse without a clue, I called a friend to join us. He and his wife came with my wife and me. We drove to the farm in my station wagon ( an hour away). Farmer McDonald put the piglet into a burlap bag. I never planned about protecting the inside of my car. The farmer put some plastic on the floor in the back then loaded a closed box of chicks and ducks plus a live sheep and goat on the plastic.
Within seconds the car stunk like a barnyard. DAH! The hour drive back to the school brought a lot of waves and laughter from people in the cars around us. Our friends sitting in the middle seat had to deal with the sheep and goat nuzzling them over the seat and sneezing on them.
Things like this make indelible memories, and in this case, 20 years later, I showed up in one of my dreams when I was creating a scrabble word list during the daytime. I entitled the lists ‘The Barnyard Series’ and here are some of the entries:

  • PIG GOAT HEN HORSE
  • PIGFISH GOATLIKE HENCOOPS HORSEFLY
  • PIGSKIN GOATFISH HENHOUSE HORSEBACK
  • PIGBOAT GOATEED HENBANE HORSEPLAY
  • PIGEONS GOATHERD HENBIT HORSESHOE
  • PIGMENT GOATISH HENNERY HORSEHAIR
  • PIGNOLI GOATSKIN HENRIES HORSEHIDE
  • PIGOUTS GOATIEST HENCE HORSEPOX
  • BUSHPIG SCAPEGOAT LENTHEN SAWHORSE
  • HEDGEPIG BUSHGOAT WATERHEN WORKHORSE

THURSDAY
5/28/2020
Safe Drivers Save 40%.
ANAGRAMMERS Score 40% More.
An ANAGRAM is a set of letters that can be manipulated and re-ordered so they can form two or more different legal words.
Did you know POOPING = POGONIP?
And it doesn’t matter how small or large the group.

  • 2s: AB = BA DO = OD HA = AH MO = OM TE = ET
  • 3s EAT = ATE = TAE = TEA = ETA SPA = ASP = PAS = SAP
  • 4s NEAR = EARN IRON = INRO = NOIR = NORI
  • 5s GEARS = AGERS = RAGES = SAGER = SARGE
  • 6s TRAINS = SANTIR = STRAIN = INSTAR
  • 7s COINERS = CRONIES ETHIONS = HISTONE

Not every word has an ANAGRAM: ID; TOE; MOUE; WITCH; ETESIAN.
What is the advantage that anagrammers possess?

When it is your turn to play, it is your challenge to place your letters onto the board creating a legal Scrabble™ word. If you are an anagrammer you will most likely know how to look for and identify combinations that fit onto your board.

  • AGLEE = EAGLE STAGE = GATES = GETAS MIS = ISM = SIM
  • LIBER = BIRLE LILTS = STILL = TILLS OAK = OKA = KOA
  • QUIET = QUITE EXITS = EXIST = SIXTE TIL = LIT

When you develop the skill of anagramming you possess one of the most important skills of scrabble™ champions. It lends itself to finding the words in the system of STEMS. Each STEM provides a pathway to many 7-Letter-Words which in turn earn you a 50 point bonus for each bingo you play.

  • ANESTRI=NASTIER=STEARIN=RETINAS=RETSINA-RETAINS=ANTSIER=
    RATINES=STAINER
  • EASTING=EATINGS=GENISTA=INGATES=INGESTS=SEATING=
    TAGINES=TEASING.

WEDNESDAY
5/27/2020
WHAT IS A WORD?
When it comes to playing the ‘official’ game of scrabble™, there isn’t any room for debate about a word is and what isn’t a word. Yet there is a constant debate on this question from ‘casual’ players who make up the majority of those who play the game day after day.
At THE BEGINNING (back in the late 1940s and early 1950s,) there was no ‘official’ dictionary. People used the FUNK & WAGNALLS or whichever dictionary they already had in their home. Years later, when the NSA (National Scrabble™ Association) was formed, and clubs and competitions began, the official word list was incorporated into the game to create a level playing field. Over the years, the OWL (Official Word List) management was assigned to the care of a WORD COMMITTEE. This committee continues to have jurisdiction over the list and has altered the OWL many times with additions and subtractions.
Currently, the only source which sells the newest copy of the OWL is NASPA (North American Scrabble™ Players Association). Some used copies may be available online at eBay or Amazon. Always make sure that you are using the latest copy of the OWL, especially if you are a serious competitor.
The OWL currently contains more than 170,000+ words. While the OWL is primarily in ENGLISH, many words come from other languages, and they are legal to play, Coming back to the question WHAT IS A WORD:
“A WORD IS ANYTHING AND ONLY ANYTHING THAT IS IN THE OWL.”
Many words are real and not found in the OWL; therefore, they are now acceptable in scrabble™. There are many foreign words in the OWL that have been transliterated. Those may have more than one acceptable spelling. There is slang in the OWL… Abbreviations and Proper Names are not acceptable in scrabble. However, when a Proper Name has a second meaning, i.e., bob, nancy, or abigail, those words can be acceptable if they are on the OWL.
There are currently 107 two-letter-words on the OWL. Each of those words has a definition; they ARE NOT abbreviations. The OWL format is merely an alphabetical list of all acceptable words from 2 to 14 letters long and their extensions. Definitions are not provided.
The OSPD6 (Official Scrabble Players Dictionary 6th Edition) is produced by Merriam Webster and sold online and in bookstores. All the entries in this dictionary are found on the OWL. HOWEVER, not all the words on the OWL are located in the OSPD6.
The OSPD6 has definitions for all of its entries.
The OSPD6 does not include more than 140 ‘naughty words’ to protect school children’s morality. Those naughty words can be legally played in scrabble outside of school competitions.

And that’s all I have to say about that!


TUESDAY
5/26/2020
PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT EVERYONE IS PLAYING
In order to be successful playing scrabble™, players require a total awareness of the letters on their racks, the countless words stored away in their memory, and a general understanding of the opportunities that they are creating for their opponents with every move they make. When you are engaging with just one opponent, you are playing both Offense and Defense.
When you are taking your turn, you must also consider how your opponent may respond after your move; additionally, you must imagine your next play. That’s a lot to be thinking, but you need to evaluate every step if you want to be a frequent WINNER.

  • Play a game of solitaire with two racks.
  • Practice analyzing the board.
  • Practice getting faster at seeing the set-ups that each turn makes.
  • Always be thinking ahead one move; if you can, imagine ahead two steps.

Many-to-most players sit there thinking away when their opponents are pondering their play. Sometimes they even decide what their next play will be. That’s good. BUT, after your opponent makes their move pause and look at the board. Reexamine any new opportunities that your opponent provided for you. Check out any new openings at the HOT SPOTS. Look for available HOOKS. Play quickly, but don’t miss an opportunity because you played too fast.
Develop your mastery at TRACKING. Develop a sense of knowing what tiles remain unseen, especially the ‘power tiles’: J, K, Q, X, Z, S, S, S, S, and two blanks.
Don’t FISH blindly. I’ve watched players exchanging in the hope of drawing a ’T’ when there were already 6 Ts sitting on the board. There are only 6 Ts.
Do you know how many of each tile is in a complete set? 9 As 2 Bs 2 Cs, 4 Ds
After your game of solitaire scrabble™, pick up a handful of tiles randomly off the board, put them aside face down, then track the remaining tiles. When you finished tracking, check to determine your accuracy. Do this repeatedly until you can track a board with 100% accuracy in under 3 minutes? Then begin tracking in your games.
When an opponent plays a word that you don’t know, write it down, add it to your list of ‘New Word I Learned At Scrabble™.’ Next time you can play that word, do so.

Don’t miss any opportunity to learn and grow.


MONDAY
5/25/2020
ITS GONNA BE A GREAT DAY

It’s Memorial Day and the beginning of summer. The whole country is trying to open up with their fingers crossed. If things go well, we’ll soon be playing scrabble™ again with friends and at clubs. I really miss all my scrabble™ buddies.
Some days are Smaragdes, while other days are Stones. Expect every day to be a GREAT DAY and take actions that will increase the number of positive scrabble™ days in your column.

  • The more you know, the luckier you become.
  • There’s a silver lining in every STEM you master.
  • In scrabble™ circles, HOOKER holds a definite advantage.
  • ANAGRAMMERS all know that ‘POOPING’ = ‘POGONIP.’
  • Fast THINKERS use TIME more efficiently, pressuring their opponents.
  • Using the HOT SPOTS will make your score SIZZLE.


8 Simple Strategies Used By Winner:

  1. Have your custom SCORESHEET and TRACKING SYSTEM.
  2. Use the bathroom before beginning each game.
  3. Sit TALL in your chair to intimidate your opponent. Sit upon a pillow.
  4. Catch your opponent doing something wrong. Call the director.
  5. Have ten unusual words in your arsenal and play them.
  6. Verify each score. Catch your opponent, miscounting.
  7. Learn to TRACK accurately. Use that to take the best advantage.
  8. HOOK as often as possible.


STAY SAFE.


SUNDAY
5/24/2020
ARE YOU ON THE HOOK?
If you’re not already on the hook, you could be. Scrabble™ players who are ‘HOOKED’ win 26.58% more games than their opponents. To become one of the hooked, all you need to do is make a pledge and follow through to seek out and learn one or more hooks every day.
Where do you begin, you ask? There are both ‘FRONT-HOOKS,’ and there are ‘END-HOOKS.’ There are A-HOOKS through Z-HOOKS. You can start with any letter. May I encourage you to place every word you choose onto a flashcard. EX: The word ‘PLENTY’ takes a front ‘A’ hook. On the front side of your flashcard, print E-L-N-P-T-Y + A; on the back print ‘APLENTY.’
If you want to create more than one flashcard per day, do no more than 5. Don’t burn out. Review your pack of cards at least three times every day, morning, noon, and evening. If and when you have the opportunity to play the word in a game, do so.
A HOOK is a single letter which, when added to the front or end of a legal Scrabble™ word, creates another acceptable word.
How do you find words with front hooks? Search the OSPD6 or the OWL one word at a time and think . . If I take off the first letter, do I still have a legal word?

  • GLITTER = G + LITTER
  • BHANG = B + HANG
  • MOTHER = M + OTHER

How do you find words with back hooks? Search for hooks other than ’S’.

  • TORII = TORI + I
  • ZOEAE = ZOEA + E
  • QUAIL = QUAI + L

You will come across many hooks that are new to you. Those words will likely be unknown to your opponents and possibly draw a challenge if you see words that are a surprise to you. Those are the words you will surely want to learn.

  • SHERO = S + HERO
  • HOWFF = HOWF + F
  • DHOW = D + HOW

When playing and you have ‘SHERO’ on your rack, think ahead. Just play ‘HERO’ on this turn and hope to play some other word with your hooking ’S’ on the next turn.

Developing that strategy will earn you many more points and cause others to fear your superior knowledge.


SATURDAY
5/23/2020
WHEN THE WORLD CHANGED
One of the last things that I did before social distancing was to play scrabble™ at the Escondido Scrabble™-Thon fundraising event to support the Literacy Project at The Escondido Library. That was on Saturday, March 7. Who knew what was to come ten days later?
It was a glorious, scrabble day. Four other players from Orange County joined me in the trek to Escondido. We carpooled from OC and had to leave by 7:15 AM to make the 9 AM start time.
I’ve been enlisting the group from OC every year for more than a decade. Before this year, teams were encouraged to compete. My OC team took 1st Place every year we entered. The members of the teams changed each year according to availability. In addition to myself, players included: Gretchen Cowan; Margie Gordon; Lynn Gunn; Bill Lapinski; Yukiko Loritz; Maliha Mahmood; Amnon Meyers; Gwen Rea; Fern Trausch.
The last meeting of Scrabble Club #350, before the world changed occurred on Wednesday evening, March 11.
Finally, some of the activities at LWV are reopening: Golf courses Driving Ranges and Tennis Courts. Everything else is still on hold.
I’m coping with the crisis by continuing to use some of my home-time to work on pieces of the game. Right now, I’m working with HOOKS again. There is enough data about HOOKS to engage anyone for weeks to months. I rotate my study items at least every three days, so I don’t lose interest or burnout. I suggest that you do the same. Keep a diary or log of the things you are studying, which will empower you when you see how much you’ve accomplished.
Join me in prepping yourself for our return to scrabble play. Today let’s do it by finding the SUB-ANAGRAMS in the word ‘UNMEWS.’ A sub-anagram is any word of any length made up of letters in the word, like ‘MEW’ or ‘SUN.’
Set a time for 15 minutes, write out your list on a paper, then check your answers against mine, which you’ll find on this web site by clicking on the link in the left column. Click on PUZZLE ANSWERS.

If you find a word that I missed, notify me with an email.
(http://just4thespellofit.com/puzzle-answers/ )
Have Fun.


FRIDAY
5/22/2020
I SENSE BOREDOM IN YOU


So here you are, social distancing for the last 60 days, reading, watching too much TV, eating too many snacks and bored out of your mind.  I’ve been breaking up the boredom in my world by working sudoku puzzles, reading the OSPD6, writing a daily blog on my scrabble web site, and creating learning exercises to amuse myself and challenge folks like you.
One of my favorite puzzles is one I named ‘What A Difference An A Makes.’ The idea of this exercise is to provide a set of letters plus a given single letter. The object is to out the word that results from the set + 1. (Ex: A-E-I-N-S-T + E)

The answer being ‘ETESIAN.’

After developing the idea, I usually go ahead and create a puzzle booklet of 70+ exercises and make the booklets available for sale. Then I often create another ten or more booklets with the same theme.
Number two on my list of all-time favorites are JUMBLES in booklets related to themes. Some of the categories include Animals; Apparel, and Monetary Units.
Ex: E-G-I-N-N-P-U; A-C-E-O-O-R-T-V; G-L-M-N-R-T-U-U


The answers being: PENGUIN; OVERCOAT; NGULTRUM


There’s rarely a dull moment at my house. The bigger problem is turning off my brain when nighttime arrives, and I know I should be heading to bed. I can’t always turn off my mind. My body knows it needs sleep, but my brain doesn’t always cooperate. I head to bed, close my eyes, find a comfortable position, and then I start thinking; my brain is working overtime. That’s when I get an excellent idea for a new kind of exercise. That’s when I think of a word and try to spell it in my head. I can’t always satisfy my curiosity and want to look it up right NOW.
That’s when I slide out of bed and head back to the computer. Here I try to capture all those things that popped up when I shut my eyes. If I can clearly recall some of those ideas, I become hooked to complete the process. At times this holds me at the computer until the wee hours of the morning.
Do you ever lose sleep thinking about FRONT-HOOKS and BACK-HOOKS? I do.
Front Hook for ‘BOON’ is A+BOON; then Front Hook to ‘ABOON,’ which is B+ABOON = ‘BABOON.’ How about front hooks to ‘AWFUL,’ ‘BASHED,’ and “CLEPT.’ What about back hooks fo ‘GWEDUC’; ‘CINQ,’ and ‘QUIP.’

I don’t know when I’d ever have enough time to do all this without
COVID-19.
JFTSOI PODCAST


THURSDAY
5/21/2020
Call Your Doctor If You Have Suicidal Thoughts
It’s only a game. Don’t get carried away. But I understand your upsets when you draw those ugly racks Heavy With Vowels or Heavy With Consonants.
Another thing that I’ve experienced that can push one over the edge is being in a 15 game/2-day tournament with ‘everything’ going my way on Day #1, winning the first 7 games. Then on Day #2 the tile gods have their fun with me by providing me with rack after rack of JUNK. (And me NOT finishing in the money.)
I often remind myself that there is a 30% luck factor in the game, so if you’re GOOD, achieving an average of 70% or better it is like a baseball batter hitting for an average over .350.

But when any disappointment happens to YOU, it smarts.

  • I’ve seen grown people cry at tournaments.
  • I’ve witnessed players just get up, walk out, and not return to finish the tournament.
  • I’ve seen players become so frustrated and angry that they’ve tossed their board with all the tiles up into the air.
  • I’ve seen some people who had the need to WIN so bad that they cheated, got caught, and were ejected on the spot.

Have you ever experienced a MELTDOWN? I never thought it could happen to me. Never over a game. Never caused by scrabble™. So I saved my hard-earned money to attend a 33-Game National Scrabble™ Tournament. I used vacation time at work, I paid the entry fee, I bought a plane ticket, I booked the hotel for 5 nights, I put aside enough money to cover meals and entertainment. At this point I was investing about $1,500. I spent a whole lot of extra time studying for two full months before the event. All my friends and family (who think I am the greatest) sent me well wishes. And then I was finally off.
The tile gods had it in for me. I totally embarrassed myself. After losing six of the first 7 games on Day#1 I knew it could only become better. You know . . . that 30%. There was a Devil in my tile bag. I only won 5 of the 33 games over 5 days.
After that beating I starting singing that song. The one that goes “pick yourself up, brush yourself off, and start all over again.” What else can one do other than the suicide route? But I’m living proof that ‘THIS TOO SHALL PASS’.

10 MONTHS LATER I WON 1st PLACE at THE KILLER CLUB!


WEDNESDAY
5/20/2020
THE SKY’s THE LIMIT

  • “I can’t play scrabble™; I’m dyslexic.”
  • “I can’t play scrabble™; I’m a terrible speller.”
  • “I can’t play scrabble™; I’m too old.”
    • What’s your excuse?
    • When you say YOU CAN’T, guess what?
    • YOU CAN’T.

You have the power to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. How many times in your life have you stopped yourself from doing something by making a declaration that “I CAN’T DO THAT!”?

Do you know that YOU CAN do anything you choose?
My friend Rodney Nivison is a scrabble™ EXPERT, and Rodney has dyslexia.
There is a very successful public speaker named Les Brown whose public school teachers pigeonholed him as retarded, and then he rose to become the man that he wanted to be.  Some world-class sprinters race without legs. (And you say I CAN’T?)
It frequently depends on desire and attitude. Any of us may shy away from doing things where we have a history of lacking success. It is much more fun to do something when we can have success and receive accolades.

So, if you don’t want to take on scrabble™, that’s fine, but it’s not because you’re a poor speller. That can be changed.

In the early 1990s, I was working as a personal trainer. One of my clients, Lisa, was an okay saleswoman working in the auto industry. She had been working at her job and had been mildly successful for more than three years. Her largest sale to date had been $75,000, while many of her competitors had sales dwarfing her results. Together we designed a 21-day program for her called, YES I CAN. The plan included doing many of the same actions she had done in the past. However, we focused on ‘INTENTION.’ During the 21 days, she did a lot of assigned reading and self-analysis of her daily TO-DO-LIST. We talked every day during the program, and she was accountable to herself and me. She was 100% true to her mission.
On Day #18, my phone rang. It was Lisa. She was Jubilant. She had just closed a deal for $450,000. We spent the better part of an hour debriefing. It was clear to me that she had accomplished her goal due to the things she had done. I was a proud mentor.

YES, YOU CAN TOO.


TUESDAY
5/19/2020
After Beginning Scrabble™ 101

  • ON DAY #1 after beginning scrabble™ 101, you will start the journey to MASTER all 107 of the 2-Letter-Words that are deemed acceptable. These are not abbreviations. Each of these words has a definition found in the OSPD6 (Official Scrabble™ Players’ Dictionary, 6th Edition). Anything not on the OSPD6 or OWL is not acceptable. MASTERING is much more than learning. MASTERING is creating an autonomic response, knowing without thinking or any hesitation.
  • ON DAY #2, after beginning scrabble™ 101, you will learn that you may have one or more BAD SCRABBLE™ HABITS. It behooves you to lose your bad habits ASAP, but that’s much harder said than done. You’ll find that you need to develop skills that require practice and repetition. You’ll learn that you’ll be most effective when you chart your progress.
    You’ll be tempted to think you can use shortcuts by side-stepping some of my suggestions and doing things your way.
    You’ll learn that by initially doing things, your way will diminish your experience and only lead to more bad habits.
  • ON DAY #3, after beginning scrabble™ 101, you’ll be looking at HOOKS to the 2s. You will appreciate the value of the 2s for placing words from your rack onto the board. Knowing MOST OF THE 2s is not good enough. You must MASTER every one of them.
  • ON DAY #4 after beginning scrabble™ 101, you’ll learn which of the 2-Letter Words can create high scores, using the HOT SPOTS. You’ll be prompted to see the board so that you’ll rarely miss a higher scoring opportunity in future games.
    One common error made by ‘novice’ players is that they frequently miss opportunities that are hiding in plain sight. My students learn systems enabling them to quiet their anxiety during a competition, seeing the board methodically, and making their best plays.
  • ON DAYS #5 thru #30 after beginning scrabble™ 101, my students will continue learning every piece of the game from TRACKING to HOOKS to STEMS to ANAGRAMS and more. Students are challenged with exercises that will create a series of ‘AHAs.’ You will see many things you may have already known but with a deeper, clearer understanding and appreciation.

WILL YOU MASTER ALL 30 LESSONS IN THIRTY DAYS?

NO! But you will possess all 30 pieces, and you will master all of them over time as you apply SPACED-REPETITION to them at your own pace.
You will become a much better and knowledgeable player after Scrabble™ 101.
Call me today, and you can begin tomorrow. (949) 510-1673.


MONDAY
5/18/2020
A GAME CHANGER
The producers and sellers of the game scrabble™, tell us that one out of every ten households in the United States owns a scrabble™ set. With that said, it becomes easy to predict that the overwhelming majority of people who play scrabble™ are casual, kitchen table, players.
While the majority of players are amateurs, there is usually one person in the family or one who rises to the top of the pile, becoming the K-O-T-H (King of the Hill) Q-O-T-H (Queen of the Hill) in every group. That person sometimes seeks out the better competition and wanders into the lair of CLUB PLAYERS. Club players are very competitive compared to the average street player.
Club play is a whole different game.
Most casual players who find themselves in the lair of club players are shocked by the word knowledge and expertise of the seemingly old blue-hairs and young kids who bingo, bingo, bingo on almost every other turn. The more significant majority of these newbies rarely return a second time. They rarely take or make the time to learn the basics of what club players are doing to account for playing that well.
Believe It Or Not . . . you can become a formidable opponent, and respected scrabble™ club player too . . . if you so choose. It will not take you a lifetime to develop the skills and vocabulary needed to move up in the ranks.
To be precise, YOU have to change the way you play the game. Forget how you’ve been playing, lose the bad habits held by most casual players, and learn The Basics of club and tournament play. You can do it on your own, or you can get a fast start at ‘SCRABBLE™ 101’ Contact: JFTSOI.MOSS@gmail.com
You can get an overview of The Basics in 30 Days, and I promise that if you play for 30 more years, you’ll still be learning things and refining your game skills. There are 175,000+ words on the Official Word List. You most likely already know 5% or 8,750+ words on the list. The rest will be up to you.
Playing at the Club level is a game-changer and great fun for people who love learning, love learning new words, and enjoy the competition.

Check out the Word Of The Day by clicking on the left column.


SUNDAY
5/17/2020
DRIP, DRIP, DRIP
Most things don’t happen all at once. That’s why there is TIME; it provides space between the drips. We can see its effects everywhere in nature. Some of the most dramatic examples are the Arches in our national parks, the Grand Canyon, and the majestic Red Woods.
Our personal knowledge, ascending to speed, takes time and experiences, which allow us to flourish (some faster and greater than others).
I’ve been dripping for more than 30 years, hoping to create stalagmite of scrabble™ knowledge. I consciously worked at being a Johnny Appleseed with scrabble™ words on Whiz Cards. I have been planting acceptable words across vast expanses of the US and Canada and on the internet.
It is clear to me that we can all become excellent scrabble aficionados using the drip, drip, drip method, and spaced-repetition.

  • See the Word.
  • Say the Word.
  • Write the Word.
  • Put the Word on a flashcard.
  • Place the tiles forming the Word onto your scrabble board.
  • Create the Word with alphabet cookies; eat the Word.
  • Write the Word in the sand with your finger.
  • Paint the Word with water-colors.
  • Share the Word with others.
  • Play the Word during a game of scrabble™.
    Repeat often.
  • MASTER all 107 2-Letter-Words
  • LEARN all 1,082 3-Letter-Words
  • REVIEW all 4,218 4-Letter-Words
  • REMEMBER ! ! You do not have to do this all in one day, one week, or one month.

Drip, drip, drip your way to success like the Tortoise;
Slow and Steady Wins.


SATURDAY
5/16/2020
STILL THINKING PIGS
(Start with your Big Toe and proceed to the smallest toe.)
This Little Piggy went to the Farmer’s Market on Melrose in LA, where Scrabble™ Club #350 was hosting a special event at 7 PM to honor the memory of all those dear friends who played the game and remain unforgotten.
This Little Piggy stayed home. But he began feeling guilty as the time got closer to the start time of the event. By 5 PM, the guilt was unbearable, so he headed out, arriving at 6:45 PM with just enough time to sign in and be assigned an opponent. He scurried to his appointed board and played ‘BEEF’ at F8 – I8.
This Little Piggy played ‘ROASTBEEF’. ‘BEEF’ was already on the board at (F8-I8). So, when this Little Piggy added ‘ROAST’ to ‘BEEF’ as a front extension, it scored 42pts.
Reacting immediately, the other Little Piggy was outraged by this little Piggy’s CHUTZPA and CHALLENGED the play (even though he wasn’t entirely confident that it was a Phony).
Their pigs’ feet clattered on the floorboards as they made their way to the adjudication computer at the far of the room. The other Little Piggy let out the loudest OINK when the computer registered NOT ACCEPTABLE. This Little Piggy withdrew his play and took a ‘0’ (ZERO) for that turn.
That Little Piggy played ‘NONE’ (horizontally above ‘BEEF’ with the first ’N’ over the second ‘E’ at H7 and the ‘O’ over the ‘F’ at I7) for 13 points.
Then this Little Piggy cried wee, wee, wee, wee, wee (just like that Piggy in the Geico™ commercial). And the game continued until its conclusion. This Little Piggy won the game with a + spread of 56 points.
That Little Piggy complained that this Little Piggy had hogged all the good tiles. But the tiles go to the players randomly as they draw them blindly out of the tile bag. This Little Piggy grunted, saying that Little Piggy was pig-headed and a poor loser. The director called for cooler heads and demanded that they makeup and shake hooves. The pigs complied, and they all adjourned to the kitchen where they all pigged out.


FRIDAY
5/15/2020
WHY DID THE NEWBIE CROSS THE ROAD?
When we finally caught up with her and asked her why she had no recollection of crossing the road at that time in that place.
The place, however, was at a crosswalk, and it was less than a half-block from her local scrabble™ club meeting site, and she was running late.
The newbie was a thirty-something woman, originally from Atlanta. Her big claim-to-fame was having once beaten Cynthia Seales at the Atlanta club. After further investigation and probing, we uncovered that she was lost in her mind, reviewing all the 2s while walking to the club session. She was sporting a scrabble T-Shirt with an array of all the 2-Letter-Words and was anxious to appear in it at club. While some people are challenged to walk and chew gum at the same time . . . motivated scrabble players are great at multi-tasking as long as one of the activities revolves around words.
Some of the multi-task pursuits of scrabble players can be downright dangerous. Consider Jason from the club in Albany. He likes to attempt to anagram or sub-anagram street-signs while driving around town. As a result, he has had two minor fender-benders and received a few tickets for illegal right turn on Red, rolling through a STOP sign, and parking too far from the curb. At other times Jason puts on his JFTSOI scrabble cap and sits in a prominent location in a city park, making sub-anagram lists from words on the surrounding billboards. He loves interacting with passers-by who frequently stop when they notice his cap that says ‘PLAY MORE SCRABBLE.’ People love it.
While riding her bike, Carol from a club in Detroit, Michigan, almost hit a pedestrian when she became extremely excited after seeing ‘DOTTIER’ in her mind’s eye. Seeing the older man at the last instant, she sacrificed herself and steered her bike into a lilac bush. OUCH!
Then there was Don, en route from Orange County to Rancho Cucamonga, CA. He left O.C just afternoon. Traffic was relatively light and flowing at about 70mph. Don was sorta daydreaming and thinking about the sub-anagrams in ‘Rancho Cucamonga.’ He lost all sense of time with his mind productively finding words like ‘coachman’ ‘curacao’ and ‘gunroom.’ He was so enjoying himself until he had to use a bathroom, shook himself to being back in the moment, and discovered that he was almost to Las Vegas at the CA./NV. Border. Don pulled into Whiskey Pete’s Casino, used the facilities, played an entire shoe at a Black Jack table (Winning $35) then turned around for the long ride home.
Being a NEWBIE is a dangerous place in life. There is still so much to learn and an urgency to try to learn it ALL ASAP. But that is an impossible task. Even after 30 years in the ranks, I still find myself learning things almost every time I play the game. There’s always a new HOOK, a new WORD, or another ANAGRAM I never noticed before. The more we learn, the more obvious it becomes that there is still even more that we don’t know. No matter how long we play, there will always be a bit of a Newbie that will live on within each of us.


THURSDAY
5/14/2020
ALPHAGRAMS, ANAGRAMS, and CONSOGRAMS

(not necessarily in that order)
Consograms are a system for remembering words based upon the consonants in the words. (Usually revolving around 3 consonants)

  • 5-Letter-Words with CDD
    CADDY, CEDED, CODED, CUDDY, DICED
  • 5-Letter-Words with CDF
    DECAF, FACED
  • 5-Letter-Words with CDG
    CADGE, CADGY, CAGED
  • 7-Letter-Words with DFG = 49 words ie.
    DEFYING, FLAGGED, FOGDOGS
  • 7-Letter-Words with JKL = 10 words ie.
    JACKLEG, JAYWALK, LOCKJAW
  • 7-Letter-Words with MMN =79 words ie.
    ALSMAN, COMMAND, MILKMAN

Alphagrams are the way you can set up your tile rack alphabetically and then use that arrangement as your learning system. This has been adopted by many of the top scrabble players across time.

  • 4s AERT = RATE, TARE, RATE
  • 5s EINRT = INERT, INTER, NITER, NITRE, TRINE
  • 6s AINPRS = SPRAIN
  • 7s AEGIMRT = MIGRATE, RAGTIME

Anagrams words in words providing scrabble players multiple options for using specific sets of letters. The majority of time searching for anagrams is within 7 & 8 letter words because they lend themselves to creating BINGOS and earning bonus-bingo-points (+50).

  • ANESTRI = ANTSIER = NASTIER = RATINES = RETAINS = RETINAS = RETSINA= STAINER = STEARIN
  • EASTING = EATINGS = GENISTA = INGATES = INGESTA = SEATING = TAGINES = TEASING

These are some of the amazing things that I learned and rely on whenever I play scrabble™. You Can Too.


WEDNESDAY
5/13/2020
BRING HOME THE BACON
Once upon a time, there were 3 Little Pigs, Pokey, Porky, and Pennelopy who grew up in a happy home with caring, and hard-working parents. A time came when the piglets grew to the stage in their lives where they played games learning many life lessons.   So when Christmas was nearing, mama sow went shopping on Black Friday and bought each piglet his or her own Deluxe Scrabble™ Set, hoping the gifts would open their worlds to words and more. In the weeks between Black Friday and Christmas, mama sow gathered her litter around the kitchen table after dinner and taught her piglets how Scrabble™ was played. They all became excited, hoping to prove to the world that pigs are the smartest members in the barnyard. When they received their gifts on Christmas morning they were all stoked and excited to receive their own scrabble™ sets.
Pokey took his set to the barn where he taught the game to his animal friends and played day and night. He hoped to play often enough so that he’d become the best scrabble™ player in the barnyard. What he didn’t realize was that as frequently as he played, the set of words that he and the other animals played were limited to the extent of their knowledge.  Rarely any new words were introduced to their games. The games were fun but stagnant.
Porky went into town the day after Christmas to have his tail curled. While at the salon he talked about his scrabble™ gift.   Another customer in the salon who overheard the conversation happened to be the director of a local scrabble™ club and invited Porky to attend club later that same afternoon.  Porky was more than excited. Once at the club, he met several friendly players who offered him this hint and that suggestion and he felt he had tapped into a wealth of knowledge. What he didn’t know was that some of the information that he was taking in as ‘good’ information was flawed and leading him down a path of learning bad habits. Porky didn’t know that THEY didn’t know what THEY didn’t know.
Pennelopy was a computer whiz. She surfed the web for hours at a time and found many sources of information. She was very particular and knew that everything on the internet was not necessarily what it promised to be. After a day or five, she was lucky enough to identify a reputable source. It was my Online Class, ‘SCRABBLE™ 101’. Pennelopy called me and we identified her goals and I described in detail how I would coach her via the course. She began working with me that very same evening.
Weeks and months passed. The three pigs each improved their game skills to different degrees in their own ways. Each felt that they were improving by leaps and bounds beyond the abilities of their siblings, in their own fashion.
Then it happened that the local scrabble™ club decided to hold an OPEN Scrabble™ Competition. The whole town was abuzz.  Entries came from near and far. Some of the entries were famous mavins with renowned reputations. Early enrollees included: Henny Penny; Horse Sense; and Virginia Wolf who were the odds on favorite to win the whole enchilada.   Virginia had a reputation of blowing her opponents away.
When Tournament Day finally arrived Pokey Pig was paired against Hose Sense. Even though Pokey played according to all the rules he soon fell behind in the score because his vocabulary was not powerful enough to compete. Horse Sense played many words that left Pokey oinking in his own dust.
Porky Pig faced off with Henny Penny. Porky opened with ‘ZELKOVA’ and Henny countered with ‘ABOIDEAU’ through the ‘A’. And then it was back and forth. At the very end of the game, Porky was short on time. He knew that his rack most likely contained a bingo but he couldn’t remember it. (AEEINST) He slipped into negative time, gave up on finding the bingo, and lost the game by 37 points. When asked about the experience of playing tournament scrabble™ all he could say was, “It felt like the sky was falling”.
Pennelopy took several deep breathes and tried to stare Ms. Wolf down before her game began. She closed her eyes and reviewed all 30 lessons and the exercises she aced during ‘Scrabble™ 101’. She remembered HOOKS and ANAGRAMS. She recalled STEMS and CONSOGRAMS, And then the game began. She played parallel words earning maximum scores.  She used HOT SPOTS, playing lesser-known HOOKS, drawing challenges with words like ’S’ + ‘HERO’ (SHERO) and ‘A’ + ‘URIC’ (AURIC). She TRACKED making sure she knew what tiles remained unseen. Virginia tried to blow her over at several crucial points during the game but Pennelopy dug her pigs’ feet into the tiled floor and held her ground. Pennelopy wolfed down Virginia and when the hayseeds settled, stood proudly alone in the winners’ circle.

MORAL: Save your BACON with SCRABBLE™ 101.


TUESDAY
MAY 12, 2020
WHERE CAN I FIND A SCRABBLE TEACHER?

  • Maybe you can find a study guide at Barnes & Noble or some other bookstore.
  • Maybe you could play non-stop and improve with practice.
  • How about enrolling in college courses majoring in English and Literature?
  • How much time would it take a knowledgeable scrabble club player to teach you all that you’d need to know? 
  • Would you be able to identify a suitable teacher?

I’ve got it. Go to Google and search ‘how to play scrabble.’ Don’t waste your time; I’ve been there. It will teach you just enough to become a frequent loser.
ENOUGH! Where can one go to find a ‘HOW TO’ guide, which will allow a person to become a worthy adversary?
Look no further. You are in the perfect place—MY HOUSE.
I have been teaching scrabble skills and creating scrabble learning tools for more than 30 years. Some of the things which I can provide for you include:

  • EQUIPMENT: custom boards; pro tiles, tile bags, time clocks; score sheets
  • LEARNING TOOLS: All varieties of Flashcards ( 2-Letter-Words; 3-Letter-Words;
  • Sets with high-value letters, i.e., 4-Letter-J-Words; 4-Letter-X-Words;)
  • STEMS: A Stem is a high probability set of 6 Letters + a variable. There are 100 different sets of 6s to 7s; 100 sets of 6s to 8th.
  • ANAGRAMS: 100 different sets
  • MNEMONICS: 100 different cards
  • STEMS of Book Marks.
  • WORKBOOKS, each with multiple exercises designed to build your skills.
  • HOOKS: More than 100 different books.
  • VIDEO FLASHCARDS: More than 100 different PDF files to work on your computer.
  • SCRABBLE 101, my online course, a 30-day course to build your word knowledge and skills. I will be your “personal” coach on this journey.

Contact me via email:
JFTSOI.MOSS@gmail.com to tell me how I can help.


MONDAY
MAY 11, 2020
YOUR MOTIVATOR

  • What motivates you?
  • When does it occur?
  • Does motivation happen to you now and then, or is it something that you have learned draw upon when you need it, and so you do specific actions?

We are not all motivated by the same factors.
Some of us are more easily motivated than others.
An untidy home will quickly motivate some people to clean and wash and arrange things to meet their standards before they can rest and be at peace. Others can live among all sorts of dust and clutter without lifting a finger until visitors are expected.
I remember being about ten years old, living in an upstairs flat on Northlawn. We were renters, and the landlord, Charlie, and his son lived below. To enter the building, we’d walk past an archway that looked into Charlie’s living room. By the looks of things, he hadn’t cleaned the place in years. Newspapers and books and magazines were stacked against the walls and on chairs and tables. There were visible cobwebs everywhere. It bothered my mother, who was a prudent housekeeper. Mom got it into her head that Charlie, an older single dad, didn’t make time to do the house cleaning. Mom planned to clean Charlie’s home as a birthday gift. And she did.
She waited for Charlie to come home that evening and expected him to thank her for her thoughtful gift. Instead, Charlie flew into a rage. We had never seen that angry side of Charlie before. His home had been untouched for the last dozen years since his wife had passed. Who knew?

When I lose a challenge at the scrabble board or play against Mavins, who seem to know much more than me, I become motivated to take action to study more, learn more, make more lists. When I chart my progress, I can usually witness my growth and development. When I see how my actions lead to my growth, I become motivated to do even more. If I don’t track my advances and see my measured improvement, I don’t try as hard.
I see motivation as a good thing. It keeps cobwebs from clouding up my mind.

SUNDAY
5/10/2020
SHE
Happy MOTHERS DAY to all you MOMs. Today I find myself thinking about my mom. My mom, Dorothy Moss, passed in October of 2016 at the age of 96. She was born in Detroit on the leap year of 1920, married Jay Harmon Moss, the love of her life, on June 21, 1941, and touched the hearts and souls of everyone she encountered in the 96+ years she was with us. She was mother to Gary, Joel, and Karen, grandmother to Sue, Marty, Rachael, Steve, Stacy, Alex, Lauren and Lindsay, Great grandmother to Haley, Wiley, Zuzu, Amanda, and Griffin. She was the proud and doting matriarch of her extended family. Her greatest gift was that she made herself available, to cook, to bake, to sew, to volunteer, or just listen. She was hilarious. The world is less exciting without her. And I am grateful that she didn’t have to deal with Covid-19.
She gave me a false sense of tallness and taught me many life lessons. Living under her roof, I thought that it was natural for people to put on large amounts of weight and then diet the extra pounds away. I watched her and came to believe that it was noble and reasonable to hold grudges against your adversaries. I still despise some kid who stole my lunch money at Noble Elementary School. It was mom who taught me to work HARDER (which I did), and it wasn’t until meeting Dr. Bill McGrane that I learned to ‘WORK SMARTER’. Mom was a Den Mother, a housekeeper, a world-class BAKER (but her Pot Roast always was missing some spice). She washed our clothes, chauffeured us to and fro, supervised me delivering Newspapers (driving me around on the coldest days), she worked jobs to bring home a second salary, also as a leader at the synagogue in the Sisterhood and as a Youth Advisor. Mom had a strong moral and social code that she wanted her kids to adopt and follow. She was not flexible. When I wanted to attend Middle School ‘A’ after graduating from elementary school, and she wanted me to attend Middle School ‘B’, guess where I went? I went to Post Middle School . . . her choice ‘B.’ She found after-school jobs for me so that I could earn spending money that she and dad couldn’t afford to give me as an allowance.
On a 1 – 10 scale, I give my mom a 9. I think that’s more than excellent and higher than the average peahen. That other stuff that makes her a nine instead of a 10 is purely my perception of the issues that forced her heels into the ground and push and resist against me. (Unconditional Acceptance) And yet . . . I loved my mom unconditionally, even when she turned her back on me for her own reasons. Having experienced that pain has led me to provide conditional acceptance of my children and associates. It has made me more empathetic
Mom is personally responsible for me acquiring specific tastes for Chocolate, Ice-Cream (all flavors, but not popsicles), Kreplach, Fried Bologna, Hot Dogs, Pan-Fried Veal Chops, Spaghetti, Kugel, Matzo-Ball Soup, Mushroom Barley Soup, Fried Chicken Livers, Chopped Liver, Corned Beef, Dill Pickles, Mashed Potatoes, Bagels, Rye-Bread & Butter, Ketchup, Canasta-Chocolate Cake, Boston Coolers, Chocolate-Chip Cookies, Coconut-Cream Pie, Latkes, Hamentashen, Pizza, Greens Hamburgers, Chinese Cuisine, and Kasha.
Let’s raise a fork to MOM.


SATURDAY
5/9/2020
A TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE
The memory is pretty amazing. Sometimes you can be doing something in the NOW, and some trigger ignites stuff that you haven’t thought about in years. I believe that the more you use your memory, the better your mind/brain works. I feel fortunate and blessed that my memory entertains me with vivid dreams at night and daydreams, too, when I least expect it.

Photo by Terri-Lynn Pellegri

(Photo by Terri-Lynn Pellegri)

This morning, my photographer, sister-in-law, posted a photo of some generic tree branches. It was like clicking a link to the internet for me. All of a sudden, I was eight years old, living at 14046 Northlawn in Detroit, Michigan. I had just received the gift of a BROWNIE 620 Box Camera. I was outside on the sidewalk, pointing my camera up at the branches of the elm trees that created a canopy over Northlawn. I shot the entire roll of film (only a dozen photos), and then I took the film to the corner drugstore, filing out a form and leaving it for pick-up by the Kodak Processing Service (which took a week). My oh my how the world has changed. That was in 1950.
I’m not an avid reader, but during these last seven weeks, I’ve been reading up a storm. I’m now on my sixth novel during this time. The current book is entitled ‘The Ripple Effect’ by Paul Garrison. One of the characters in the story is a fifteen-year-old girl who plans to steal a boat to escape her worrisome life and sail away. She’s a novice sailor and thinks she knows a lot more than she does. She doesn’t hesitate; she is fearless. This, too, worked on me like a TIME MACHINE, much like the experience had by Scrooge on Christmas Eve.
I was 14 years old, living in my parent’s home on Northlawn, in Detroit. I was active in USY (United Synagogue Youth) and had friends in many other chapters across the mid-west. I suffered from a gnawing case of puppy love. The object of my affection was a girl who lived in Cleveland, who had invited me to be her date at her Bat-Mitzvah. I was definitely going, but my folks said emphatically NO. I made arrangements to stay with a friend who also was invited to attend the event. On the Friday before the Saturday party, I played sick and waited for my mom to head out to work. As soon as I heard her car pull away, I packed a bag and called Checker Cab. I told the driver to take me to the Greyhound Bus Depot, where I purchased a ticket on the bus that left at 11 AM. It was a slow bus with stops in Monroe, MI, Toledo, OH, Sandusky, OH., and then Cleveland.
Being the GOOD, THOUGHTFUL BOY who I was, I left a note so my parents wouldn’t stress. I never stopped to consider their reaction. They knew the parents of my friend where I’d stay. They were waiting for me at the Bus Depot in Cleveland, where they intercepted me and put me on a return bus to Detroit.
My 2nd and 3rd runaway attempts didn’t occur until I was a grown adult nearing 40. I was more successful on these occasions with foibles and stories of their own.


FRIDAY
5/8/2020
TO BECOME ELITE -or- to remain plebeian . . . That is the Question.
HAVE YOU EVER REALIZED, THE MORE OFTEN YOU FIND WORDS ON YOUR RACK THE MORE HIGHLY YOU THINK OF YOURSELF?
You feel smarter; you feel clever; you feel luckier; you feel invincible.
Enjoy those feelings, but don’t close a blind eye to the facts.
You most likely took some action to learn those words at some point in your past. Merely discovering the patterns within words will allow you to make countless educated guesses that ferret out words in plain sight.
Recognition of words could be the result of having read them in a book, seeing them on a billboard, studying them on a word list, watching a scrabble opponent playing them against you, finding them inside a Chinese fortune cookie, or finding them in the small print on a traffic ticket or summons. The possibilities are endless.
If you are mindful of making a plan that includes being actively engaged with learning words all the time, making mental and written notes related to the above circumstances and beyond . . . you will find yourself on a path to wisdom.
BUT beware! I’ve been on that path for more than 30 years. I keep an OWL and a pad of paper on my night-stand. I frequently dream about words and have found myself sitting up in bed, waking from a deep sleep, to turn on the light and look up that particular word in the dictionary. If I find the word, I feel lucky and quickly go back to sleep. But there are other times when I can’t find the word on my first try. I then head to my computer and try the word-search. By that time, I’m wide awake, and there goes another night’s sleep.
Another MINUS. If and when you play online scrabble™ against strangers, and you find ‘lesser-known words’ on your rack and play them . . . your opponents may call you a cheater and quit mid-game. Most of your friends and family who are casual scrabble™ players won’t want to play scrabble™ with you any longer.
You will be able to find club players very excited to have you join them as their opponents. Clubs and tournaments are happening all around the world that wants you to play with them.
That’s what’s in your future if you are a ‘Smartie Pants.’


THURSDAY
5/7/2020
WHERE’D YOU GET THAT NAME?

People ask me HOW and WHY I came up with the name JFTSOI?
I wish I could remember and share the original inspiration for the name. But I can tell you this . .. In the beginning, the name was Just FOR The Spell Of It. That was in the early 1990s. and it stayed that way for nearly 10 years. At some point at the end of the 1990s, I found myself relocated from Michigan to California. Besides having a new residence I was reinventing myself and one piece of that was establishing a website and a daily blog. I always tried to do things on my own and even though I was very comfortable using the computer, I wanted to make my website special. I searched for a professional computer guy/gal to assist me with the creation of my new site.
For a few years in the late 1990s, I lived in a 32-foot RV at The Dunes RV Park in Newport Beach, California. It was from there I resurrected Scrabble Club #350 with locations in Costa Mesa and Tournaments every 1st Sunday on the grounds at The Dunes.
In order to network with local businesses and residents, I joined the Costa Mesa Chamber of Commerce and attended their weekly meetings and lunches at The Costa Mesa Country Club. It was there that I met a savvy computer guy whom I hired to create my new web site. I gave him a $DEPOSIT$ and to make things easier for him, I provided him the authority to use my name (Just For The Spell Of It) and register it as part of creating the web site. Weeks passed.
Oops! The most unlikely people can turn out to be scammers.
After a few weeks and little results, I expressed my displeasure and tried to renege on our verbal agreement. He refused to cancel our agreement and refund my deposit, and he never produced anything of value. When I attempted to reclaim my name I learned that he had registered it using his own name. Then I think he had the balls to try to sell my own name back to me. I was angry and didn’t want to engage in a court battle.
I looked for alternatives and came up with substituting a ‘4’ for the word ‘FOR’.


WEDNESDAY
May 6/2020
GIVE YOURSELF A BOOST
Don’t just sit there. Don’t ask what others will do to help you with your scrabble™ prowess . . . think about what you can do to give yourself a boost.
I’m here to help.
The greater majority of scrabble™ players dislike and avoid the ‘sweat factor.’ These folks receive their satisfaction from playing and tell themselves that the more often they play the game, the better they’ll become. While that is incrementally true, they continue to lag far behind the others who pursue as little as one new word per week. And it doesn’t that much energy to learn words to expand your vocabulary.
When most first-time visitors come to any scrabble club, they all ask the same question: “Are those real words on the board”? That’s because they don’t know how much they don’t know.
The average person you meet randomly knows only about 5% of the words in the scrabble™ dictionary. That doesn’t mean that all those other words are not real. With more than 175,000 words in the scrabble™ dictionary, that means that the random person does not know more than 166,000 words.
You might be wondering where does one even begin to learn 166,000 words and all the other skills to improve your game. The answer is simple—one step at a time. Use the most efficient path to advance in the ranks.
You can try to figure it out on your own, or you can ask someone like myself. Someone who has a plan to build scrabble knowledge and skills.

One way to obtain a fast start is with my online class, SCRABBLE™ 101. Call me at (949) 510-1673.

This web site has many other hints for players who are growing into the game. Click on the links on the Left Margin and explore. Personal growth happens when you take action. Very little happens when you take a passive approach and sit waiting for information to come to you.
STEP UP.


TUESDAY
5/5/2020
CINCO DE MAYO
Cinco de Mayo is an annual celebration held on May 5. The date is observed to commemorate the Mexican Army’s victory over the French Empire at the Battle of Puebla, on May 5, 1862, under the leadership of General Ignacio Zaragoza
When in 1861 Mexico declared a temporary moratorium on the repayment of foreign debts, English, Spanish, and French troops invaded the country. By April 1862 the English and Spanish had withdrawn, but the French, with the support of wealthy landowners, remained in an attempt to establish a monarchy under Maximilian of Austria and to curb U.S. power in North America. On May 5, 1862, a poorly equipped mestizo and Zapotec force under the command of General Ignacio Zaragoza defeated French troops at the Battle of Puebla, southeast of Mexico City; about 1,000 French troops were killed. Although the fighting continued and the French were not driven out for another five years, the victory at Puebla became a symbol of Mexican resistance to foreign domination. The city, which was later renamed Puebla de Zaragoza, is the site of a museum devoted to the battle, and the battlefield itself is maintained as a park.
The day is celebrated in the state of Puebla with parades, speeches, and reenactments of the 1862 battle, though it is not much noticed in most of the rest of the country. In the mid-20th-century U.S., the celebration of Cinco de Mayo became among Mexican immigrants a way of encouraging pride in their Mexican heritage. Critics observed that enthusiasm for the holiday celebration did not take off with a broader demographic until it was explicitly linked with the promotion of Mexican alcoholic beverages and that many U.S. festivities tended to both perpetuate negative stereotypes of Mexicans and promote excessive drinking.
Can you spell C-E-R-V-E-Z-A ?
Spanish Scrabble™ plays just like the classic Scrabble™, but different letter values on the tiles correspond with Spanish language usage. It’s a great way to practice.
The Spanish language does not natively contain the letters K or W, and they are therefore not included in this lookup utility. The accented letter ñ is a separate letter tile in Spanish Scrabble as are the letter combinations “CH”, “LL” and “RR”.


There are many Spanish words in the OWL, including one of the newer words that has a ‘Q’ without a ‘U’, ‘CINQ’ (very handy).


MONDAY
May 4, 2020
MAY THE 4th BE WITH YOU
May the 4th became a very special day with a whole different perspective with the STAR-WARS franchise. Trekkies tweaked things and began greeting one another with ‘May the 4th Be With You’ (May the FORCE Be With You).
While STAR-WARS has made a big splash in pop-culture, much of the terminology has not yet made its way into the scrabble™ lexicon. So, as of now, do not use any of the following terms since they are all unacceptable: CARBONITE; JEDI; NERFHERDER; PADAWAN; STORMTROOPER; WOOKIEE . . . BUT both DROID and FORCE are okay to use.
The contents of the OWL (Official Word List) is an arbitrary set of words put together under the auspices of the Dictionary Committee of NASPA (North American Scrabble™ Players Association). Every few years there have been both additions and subtractions to the OWL. If you are a serious, competitive player you’ll want to be certain that you are using the newest up-to-date version of the Official Word List. BEWARE! There’s a lot of bad information out there on the internet and on shelves in bookstores that push old, outdated lists. If you are in doubt ask me or any other sanctioned scrabble™ director.
Sometimes the updated changes reflect the changing world of words. The last newest version also includes some utterances that are used in some circles but are frowned upon by language purists. But that brings us down to the basic question, “What Is A Word?” You may not even know that some of these entries exist on the OWL. Words like: WHATSIS; OUTA; GRRRL; BRRR; CWM; and QWERTY.
This brings me back to something I tell all newcomers to competitive scrabble™. While most people see the game as an exercise in word knowledge and strategy, the game is really an exercise in MEMORIZATION. While the OWL contains more than 175,000 entries . . . there may be a million or more words in word lexicons. The OWL is only a select portion that is deemed acceptable by the rules of the game. Included within the OWL there are many entries from many cultures, not just English. If you play in some other part of the world you will find other lexicons like COLLINS being used. ENJOY and GROW YOUR EXPERTISE.

MAY THE 4th BE WITH YOU!

Saturday
5/2/2020
JOJO LIKES IT!
Gretchen got a dog. Not just any dog. JoJo is a LEXICON-SPANIEL. JoJo looks like most other Spaniels from the pound but has been specifically bred to be able to recognize words. Even before being fully weaned her caregivers had taped pages from the OWL onto the walls in her quarters. The LEXICON-SPANIEL has an innate ability that is envied by scrabble™ players near and far. The dog sees words and remembers them with its photographic memory.
Gretchen has a granddaughter. Sarah has come back to the home that Gretchen shares with her daughter and son-in-law. The pandemic closed all universities and brought Sarah back home to finish her studies. Gretchen is a lot like you and me, scrabble™ starved. She implored Sarah to play scrabble™ when she takes her breaks from studying. Sarah had been a very casual player up until a few weeks ago but when Gretchen shared a few scrabble™ tricks with her granddaughter, Sarah came into her own as a formidable opponent.
That’s when Gretchen took off her kid gloves and at the same time unleashed JoJo as her backup.
While JoJo can’t speak, Gretchen has trained her to give signals. When JoJo sees an acceptable word she pants and wags her tail; When JoJo sees a phony she puts her right paw over her eyes and whines. As of yesterday, Sarah has not yet caught on. Over the last three weeks, Gretchen continues to beat Sarah 2 out of every 3 games. JoJo provides an assist at least once per game.
There have been a few times when JoJo was stumped and unable to provide a clear signal. In those instances she just turned in circles, chasing her tail. The words that stumped her were RISHI, LUNGYI, BASHLYK, and DOGLIKE.
Gretchen has begun the procedure to declare JoJo as a service dog. Once that is approved and the world reopens Gretchen has plans to attend several upcoming tournaments with JoJo in tow. It will be very interesting to see how JoJo does on the tournament circuit. At this time there are NO RULES related to service animals at tournaments. JoJo will be breaking the ice and establishing precedents.

Gretchen got a dog.

FRIDAY,
5/1/2020
AS A STRUGGLING SCRABBLE™ PLAYER YOU NEED ALL THE HELP YOU CAN GET.
Today is the beginning of a new month and we all have another opportunity to enjoy a new beginning. Let’s look at things differently, struggle less, and make a dent in the obstacles that have blocked our way.

One of the greatest challenges that most of us face is our own bad habits. ‘IF YOU ALWAYS DO WHAT YOU’VE ALWAYS DONE, YOU”LL ALWAYS GET THE SAME THINGS THAT YOU”VE ALWAYS GOT’.

Know that when at first you look at things differently it usually feels uncomfortable and unnatural. DO IT ANYWAY.

  • To begin with, when you put the tiles onto your scrabble™ rack, arrange the tiles alphabetically from left to right. Challenge yourself to see the words that are hiding in plain sight. When you have A-E-G-I-M-R-T see MIGRATE, RAGTIME.
    How many of the 156 words between 2 and 7 letters can you find?
  • Develop an awareness of what tiles remain unseen (they are either still in the bag or on your opponent’s rack). After you play ‘MIGRATE’ on your first play, how many ‘M’s remain? ‘A’s? ’T’s?
  • MASTER the 107 2-Letter-Words. Whenever possible play words parallel to other words using multiple HOOKS to score double with the hooking letters.
  • Begin each turn identifying the HOT SPOTS where you can make even higher scoring plays, using high point tiles in two directions. Work at learning to look for and seeing the possibilities quickly.
  • DO NOT SQUANDER YOUR TIME. When it is your opponent’s turn you need to be thinking ahead. Get a head start on your next turn by thinking about your opponent’s time.
  • When it is your turn, while you are playing THIS TURN, give some consideration to what you may do on your next turn. Plan ahead. Set yourself up for HOOKS and/or EXTENSIONS.
  • Always have a few new, unusual, words that you’ve learned in mind to play if you get the right tiles.
  • Always hope to draw a challenge from your opponent. Once the opponent loses a challenge to you he/she will lose confidence and that’s worth a lot.

Scrabble™ is a head game as well as a word game.

YES, YOU CAN.