Anagramming

Page 1 of 3

S 1 C3 R1 A 1 B 3 B3 L 1 E 1

A1 U 1 S 1 T 1 R 1 A 1 L 1 I 1 A1

4. Anagramming
With our deep sub-conscious minds we seldom dabble But something must impel The words we spell When were playing "Scrabble". Noel Coward, Bronxville Darby and Joan Anagramming - or unscrambling a jumble of letters into meaningful words - is the core skill of the Scrabble player. Noel Coward saw it, quite rightly , as a sub-conscious experience. Experts can often spot words on their rack or across the board in the wink of an eye and , like Nabokovs Ada, shape appetizing long words from the most unpromising scraps and collops. But, excluding a handful of geniuses, most players have to work at their rack - just as writers gain their inspiration from tapping at a keyboard.

Anagramming Tips
1. Move the tiles about on your rack This may sound obvious but I have seen many club players sit motionless over bonus-containing racks which would bear fruit with the simple transposition of a tile or two. By shuffling the letters we break up arbitrary patterns and assist the mind to make structure out of nonsense. If you have ever tried anagramming 10-letter word square puzzles you will realise that it is easier to recognise the target word as a two-dimensional jumble of letters than as a linear array of text. This tactile working with the tiles, like a sculptor moulding his clay, is an important precursor to the creative process. 2. Identify bonus-prone racks Learn to allocate more time to fruitful looking combinations of letters and develop a feel for the likelihood of your rack containing a bonus. For example, give more attention to racks containing a blank or an S, S-A-T-I-R-E combos or the basic letters (one and two-point tiles). Work according to the three Ps - Patterns, Percentages and Probabilities: Pattern: Does the rack have all one pointers, are there 5 vowels? Percentage: If I have two blanks I know I have a good (about 80%) chance of a bonus. Probability: Two Ws means only 65 chances out of 31,136 of having a seven-letter word. But since I have learned all the two-W bonus words I have the knowhow to deal with these awkward racks - and the probability of my finding a seven-letter word from W-W-D-N-L-O-O suddenly approaches certainty. 3. Look for natural grammatical extensions and inflections such as -ED, -ING -IER. Identify prefixes and suffixes to link words to word sets and lists with which you are familiar.

http://www.scrabble.org.au/strategy/anagram.htm

8/26/2010

Anagramming

Page 2 of 3

For example, from D-I-K-N-N-O-S I would extract NON- (since I have memorised all the words prefixed with NON-) and find the word NONSKID. 4. Use common letter strings and combinations like STR, -TY -OO as clues and place them together on the rack where you would expect them to occur in a word. e.g. STRONG, AMENITY , BOOTIES 5. Dont think of specific words - learn to "vision" your letters. The Canadian expert player Mike Wise once said As soon as I sight the first tile Im starting to imagine a bingo. Letting your mind "float" might mean looking away from the game for a moment or even closing your eyes. Remember to look for "double-barrelled" words such as BOATMAN, TIECLIP or BULKHEAD. With letters like A-D-D-E-G-H-O mechanically positioning -ED at the end of your rack wont help you find the bonus - GODHEAD. Visualisation is particularly important when you are holding two blanks given the plethora of possibilities such good fortune brings. Look at Endgame Practice Session 4 for a nice example of this "blessed dilemma." 6. Add available letters on the board when you are anagramming to find eights or nines. You have R-E-T-A-I-N-S with no place to play it - but there is a floating A for ANTISERA, ARTESIAN, RATANIES, RESINATA or SEATRAIN. Nine-letter words are playable on average one every five games but they are often missed because players dont consciously look for them. Most often a nine is simply an extension to an eight on the board but it also pays to identify potential two-letter playthroughs like AR, ER, AT, IN, ON, OR, RE, TE and TI. e.g. D-E-G-I-R-R-S through an AN (GRANDSIRE) or E-I-I-L-R-S-Z onto STAB (STABILIZERS) Occasionally you will be able to bridge two non-adjacent letters to form a nine. In the 1997 World Championships I was lucky enough to link two As six squares apart to make FANTASIAS - for a double-double word score of 98 - the kind of move you dream about. 7. Place tiles on your rack according to the likelihood of their occurring in a given position in a word. For example, an F or a J is more likely appear at the start of a word, an S or a Y at the end. 8. Let the board or rack situation determine which length of letter you should be looking for. For example, on a closed board you might not waste time looking for a seven but concentrate on eights, nines or even four- or five- letter dumpers and blockers. You should say to yourself I need to find a word with the V in the fourth position to take best advantage of that open triple file or I dont want to play my O over that open triple word square because the X is still to come - so Ill play a word containing an I instead.

http://www.scrabble.org.au/strategy/anagram.htm

8/26/2010

Anagramming

Page 3 of 3

You also use rack management principles to limit your choice: I need to dump three vowels from my rack of A-A-A-E-I-I-L. AIA, or better still AALII, will fit the bill. I have A-E-F-H-L-T-V - the F and V are awkward - FAVE or FAVEL will do the trick. Next: Board Management

Back to Strategy Index

Australian Scrabble Players Association (ASPA) Copyright 200105 www.scrabble.org.au info@scrabble.org.au Last Updated: 31 Mar 2005

http://www.scrabble.org.au/strategy/anagram.htm

8/26/2010