What's It Mean Then?

At times it feels as if I am force-feeding myself with words. I am full up but more keep coming.

I was getting through 500 a day, but I have reduced it to 250 on more days now. This is because, unlike me, the cardbox has a limitless capacity for gobbling up what I feed it. I am giving it not only the words I miss (known but not got and never seen before in my life) but also ones that were guessable, just to reinforce them in my memory.

My hit rate varies between 70-90% on the 'new' words, and I am about 90% on the cardbox. It does seem to take 3 or more goes at getting some of them fixed in my brain. And some I totally despair of ever getting right on a consistent basis.

It is nice, however, to be doing something new rather than keep going over the same stuff . There are some really neat words that I may never get to play :)

I hit the 35000 mark yesterday...

Countdown to Singapore Continued

The onions have been pickled.

The fruit tree bed to be has now been completely covered in cow muck.

The veggie patch is going to have to wait until next year.

The word revision is ongoing. 16000 down, 4000 and one week to go. Seem to be getting through between 1000 and 1500 a day along with the cardbox, but some days are easier than others. A good choice to do the 8s - am quite rusty on the 10-20k range, down at around the 90% mark. But look on the bright side, if I got them all it would have been a waste of my time.

Have Spreadsheet Will Study

I have been deep in my latest study whim. Aided lately by two things. Firstly, I have picked up a cold (I am blaming Penny for dropping by last week to pass on her bugs). Secondly, my old mouse started to go senile on me and rather than sending off for an identical replacement I decided to save some money and try a different make/model. My old Logitech model was a thumb operated rollerball, and the new Kensington one has the rollerball in the middle. It is absolutely fine for normal use but I am still not mastering it for Bejewelled Blitz - left clicking with thumb does not come naturally after years of doing it differently and I have noticed I have an occasional thumb twitch...

But back to my studying...

I started creating a spreadsheet on the 19th September which was originally just the high scorers (J,Q,X,Z) listing all the base words, up to and including 6 letters, with each of those letters grouped by their position within the words. Another column alongside each column of words to indicate what kind of word it was. Then red text the blockers. And then pink text the non-blockers, no S back hook. And then blue cell fill the verbs that have agent nouns. Then reviewed the word designation columns and standardised on one or two character abbreviations:

n noun

v verb

a comparable adjective

a- non-comparable adjective

av adverb

pl plural

va verb and comparable adjective

na noun and comparable adjective

pp past tense/participle

v* verb that does not behave

n* noun that does not behave

pr pronoun

i interjective

c conjunction

anything else...

and then standardise the column width and cell colour it to make the words clearer...

And then I decided to do K, but only words starting with K and excluding the high scorers...

And then I continued on to the 4 pointers...

And I just kept going, finally finishing with S yesterday afternoon.

73 pages, although quite a lot of white space as I started a new sheet for each letter and quite a few just went a column or two onto a new page. Just need to print it out now.

I have now started on the 7 letter words in decreasing probability order. It will be interesting to see what the list reduces to...

Words of Interest - BLIPVERT

Just come across this beauty, entering the charts at number 18611:

A very short advertisement on TV

I wanna play it...

Words of Interest - HASBIAN

Just came across this in reaching the 17000 mark for sevens:

HASBIAN - a former lesbian who has changed her sexual orientation

Wasbian, wasband and yestergay have not made it in to the scrabble world yet although the first two do have valid anagrams...

Words of Interest - COWFLAP

When I first saw this word I had visions of a large swing door to allow your pet cow carte blanche to come and go as it pleased.

It is, however, one of a variety of words for cow poo. These include the normal COWPAT and COWPIE, and also the lower probability variations (in scrabble terms) of COWFLOP and COWPLOP.

A little research has shown that the word COWFLOP is also another name for a foxglove as well as the Royal Roads University Council of Western Financial, Logistical, and Operational Personnel and an American chocolate factory...

n.b. CATFLAP* is not valid - presumably hyphenated or two words. You are rescued if you have this rack with FLATCAP.

Words of Interest - CHARIDEE

This little gem appears to have been gained in the switch from Chambers to Collins. I should not really have needed to check...

CHARIDEE: charity as pronounced in a mid-Atlantic accent

It is the start of a very slippery slope if we start getting words that are just based on how they are pronounced in certain cases. However, I must admit that I can hear this one ringing loud and clear in my head, and I am cringing as I think of it.

Words of Interest - BERDASH

I have just cleared my cardbox - 227 alphagrams before I got to the point of none waiting.

Up comes ABDEHRS and I quickly get the two answers and glance at the definitions.

BERDASH - an American Indian transvestite.

This needed to be investigated further. On checking in the dictionary: usually male, adopting not only the dress but also the status and role of the opposite sex. It can also be spelt BERDACHE. It is not to be confused with BURDASH, which is/was a fringed sash worn by gentlemen in the time of Anne and George I.

Words Of Interest - NATHEMO

As a brief introduction to words of interest, which I may or may not run with in future posts...

Scrabble players are a diverse lot.

All colours, creeds, young and old, men and women and everything in between.

We also range widely in our actual interest in words - the full spectrum of 'I don't care what it means but I know it is a valid word' to the true logophiles. The vast majority of top scrabble players are from scientific/mathematical backgrounds. The problem with logophiles is that they think they have a great vocabulary, which many do, but it is not geared to being good at scrabble. They can lose track of what it is all about - playing the percentages and winning. I am a scientific 'don't really care' scrabble player.

I am much more interested in knowing a word's hooks and anagrams and what letters it combines with to make another word than what it actually means. There are just so many words that will never be used in everyday life - and even if you make an effort the person you are talking to probably won't have a clue what you are on about.

Okay - take EGILMNSU - GUMLINES/LEGUMINS/MULESING. I knew what the former two meant but how often will I have a conversation about removing anal wrinkles of sheep. On second thoughts now that I am a R-URALITE I can't rule it out.

Since I have started using zyzzyva to study I have actually switched on the display of the definitions. I am not trying to learn them but occasionally find something of interest. It may be an odd definition, an odd word or just that I have lived my life in ignorance. I must apologise to David Sutton as he is bound to have covered the following in one of his many articles in The Last Word magazine, but I will have just scanned the bold print to find any words I didn't know :)

NATHEMO
Since I first learnt this word long ago I had pronounced it in my head as Nath/Emo. I knew it was a 'blocker' - with an S it makes HOASTMEN. I now find it means 'never the more', yet another word made up by Spenser, and I will change my mental pronunciation to Nae/The/Mo'. NATHEMORE is also valid, which may come in handy if your oppo starts with NATHEMO in the optimal position...