Scrabble In Pakistan

Scrabble was started playing in 1989 in Karachi,Pakistan!!!!
And today Pakistan Scrabble Association PSA has last 23 years of success!!
Without any government or any other support!!
Mrs.Gosphi B.Avari is the owners of Avari group and she owns beach luxury hotel as well so she has dedicated a separate area for scrabble!!!
In June 2012 Pakistan Scrabble Association is going to have its 24th Pakistan Scrabble Champion in Pakistan known as national championship!!

Scrabble History

Scrabble was started played in gulf region in 1966!!!!

Cool Words from AA to ZZZ

Do you read the dictionary just to scout for cool words?

Well, I think you'll like it here!

Why? Because this page is just one giant cool words list dedicated to lovers of word games and puzzles.

For the keen Scrabblers, I've pinched quite a few unusual words from The Official Scrabble Dictionary, which is the 'secret' adjudicator used in many online and electronic word games.

If you're a cruciverbalist (a crossword lover, that is), you'll find plenty of tasty crosswordese here too!

If spelling and vocabulary are more your thing, some of the coolest words here come from word lists I've taken from all the major vocabulary exams and spelling bees.

But enough chatter. Let's get to why you popped by. Here is Word Buff's favorite list of cool words from AA to ZZZ... 

AA

n. A type of volcanic rock having a rough and jagged surface. The name is Hawaiian in origin and pronounced ah-ah.
AA is one of three types of solidified flow lava, a fact which I mention only as an excuse to throw in my favorite type, which is called PAHOEHOE. The third type has the rather mundane name ofPILLOW LAVA, which I include here only for completeness.
Of course, the serious Scrabbler will be more likely to recognize AAas an indispensable vowel-dump, and the very first word in theOfficial Scrabble Dictionary.

It is also the least interesting palindrome I know.

BANNS

npl. A formal proclamation announcing intent to marry.
This word jumped out at me when I was watching the very word-buff-esque documentary Spellbound. While participants in the final rounds are usually challenged with much longer words, this harmless looking five-letter critter knocked out a favorite (indeed MY favorite!) contender for the prize.
Despite being such a short word, it is very difficult to guess its spelling from its pronunciation (it is pronounced banz), since there is no vocal indication of the second N.
This word has also been known to trip up the odd Scrabbler. For an entirely different reason though. When a Scrabble player learns a word like BANNS, it is easy to assume it to be the plural of the non-existent BANN*. Uh oh! There's an asterisk!

CACAFOGO

n. A hot-tempered person. Also spelled CACAFUEGO.
Today's word began its life as CAGAFUEGO*, which was a nickname used by 16th century sailors for their Spanish ship Nuestra Señora de la Concepción. The choice of name came from a combination of the Spanish words Cagare, meaning to excrete, and Fuego, meaningfire. Hence Cagafuego, if taken literally, meant excrete fire, which I assume means that the ship went really fast.
However, the G was eventually corrupted to a C, resulting in the word CACAFUEGO (no asterisk!). And from there a further corruption resulted in today's word.
Interestingly, Collins gives the definition of CACAFOGO as spitfire, which Chambers in turn defines as a 'hot-tempered person'. So, did the term spitfire arise as a euphemism for shitfire which would be the literal translation of today's word? This worse-than-amateur lexicographer doesn't know the answer right now, but I'll certainly let you know if I find out.
And for Scrabble-buffs... This word came up during my interview with Andrew Fisher, a champion Scrabble player, as his answer to the question 'What is the most unlikely word you've ever played?'.
Well, I checked it out, and it certainly would be hard to beat. There are 40,161 eight-letter words allowed in Scrabble. If you were to list all these words from highest probability to lowest, Andrew's play ofCACAFOGO would come in at position 37,934!
And if that isn't unlikely enough for you, the probability of this word appearing in a New York Times crossword puzzle, if the last few decades are anything to go by, is precisely zero.

DREIDEL

n. A wooden, spinning top used in a gambling game, usually played by children during an eight-day Jewish festival called Hanukkah (orFestival of Lights).

Pronounced dray'dl, this word is bound to eliminate a few spellers from the stage.I stumbled across this word while I was researching a page on The Hebrew Alphabet. The reason this word turned up during that research is that each of the four faces of a DREIDEL displays a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The four letters traditionally used areNUN, GIMEL, HEH, and SIN, although in Israel SIN is usually replaced by PEH. In the image above, the front-facing green letter is GIMEL, and the partly visible red letter is HEH.
This research helped explain a delightful clue I encountered for this word in a New York Times crossword puzzle. Namely...

Place to see a nun

Cute heh?
For the Scrabble player, who is also allowed to use the alternative spelling of DREIDL, today's word generates three possible bonus plays: DREIDEL, DREIDELS, and DREIDLS. Of these, only DREIDLShas any anagrams (namely, RIDDLES and SLIDDER).

ERUV

n. A demarcated area within which Jewish religious restrictions are relaxed. The plural is variously written as ERUVIM, ERUVIN, or the more clunky and chauvinistic ERUVS.

I came across this word in From Square One, a charming story about crosswords by Dean Olsher...

Some Orthodox Jews extend the idea of the house-hold by stretching a string, called an eruv, around their neighborhood, so that any activity allowed only in the home on the Sabbath is therefore extended to the space defined by the eruv. I think of the crossword as a mental eruv.

HADEDAH

n. A bird of the ibis family, found in large numbers throughout South Africa.
The technical name is actually Bostrychia hagedash, but the logophile will much prefer the palindrome.
It is a large, heavy-set, dull-coloured bird, which gets its common name from the raucous call it makes when flying... 'haa-haa-haa-hadedah'.
In fact, quite a few birds have common names that are imitations of their calls. Other onomatopoeic birds I've stumbled across include...
BOBWHITE
CUCKOO
CURLEW
DICKCISSEL
KIWI
MOPOKE or MOREPORK
MOTMOT
SISKIN
TOWHEE
WHIPPOORWILL
WILLET

KATIPO

n. A very poisonous spider found in New Zealand.Many people who first play to the International Scrabble Dictionaryare understandably skeptical of the crazy words they see sprinkled across the Scrabble board. When playing such people, it's important to have some convincing evidence at hand...
A Canadian tourist in New Zealand has suffered heart inflammation after apparently being bitten on the penis by a spider. The tourist fell asleep naked on a beach in Northland, on the far tip of the north island, after going skinny dipping, the NZ Herald reported.
After the bite from the highly poisonous katipo spider, the 22-year-old began to suffer high blood pressure, rapid heartbeat and a severely swollen penis.— ninemsn.com.au, 14 March, 2010

LAODICEAN

adj. Indifferent to religious or, sometimes, political matters.
Aside from being a rather handy word to describe myself, this word caught my eye as another handy spelling bee torpedo. In particular, it was the last correctly spelled word in the 2009 Scripps National Spelling Bee, leaving 13 year old Kavya Shivashankar as the new champion. (In the previous year, Kavya was eliminated in Round 11 after incorrectly spelling ECRASE.)
This word derives from the name of an ancient biblical city calledLaodicea. In the Book of Revelations, the inhabitants of this city are ridiculed for being 'neither hot nor cold' in their faith.
Unfortunately for North American Scrabble players, Laodicean is deemed by Webster's to be capitalized, so you can't play it in Scrabble. For those playing to the International Scrabble Dictionary, the story is different, since Chambers appends the Scrabbler's much-loved clause 'also without cap'.
As I've said before, Chambers is my friend ;-)

NUMNAH

n. The padding placed between a saddle and a horse to reduce rubbing.
Here's a short video to show you how it became one of my cool words...

OTARY

n. A type of seal, including fur seals and sea lions, with well-developed external ears.
Now seals are all very interesting, but...
the Scrabble player is more likely to get excited by the following very cool properties of this word...

Firstly, it has three handy front hooks: NOTARY, ROTARY, andVOTARY.

Secondly, its plural is the high-probability bingo OTARIES, which also takes these front hooks, and has the equally useful anagramOARIEST.

Thirdly, consider this question...
If I draw seven tiles from a full tile bag, what is the most likely bingo to be drawn?
Now, since we know the exact distribution of the tiles in a standard Scrabble set, we can work out, for each valid seven-letter word, how many combinations of tiles allow that word to be formed. The winner is the word that can be formed from the largest number of combinations. Although the blanks spice things up a bit, this is a trivial problem by a mathematician's standards.
And the answer? Well, it turns out to be OTARINE, the adjectival form of OTARY!
If you take the time to learn this word, and you practice recognising it from a scrambled rack, you will almost certainly get to play it. If not, you will at least get to witness it being played by somebody else.
And that's why Scrabble players are so strangely familiar with the taxonomy of seals.

QI

n. Pronounced chee, and more commonly spelt CHI, a term used in Chinese medicine to describe the life-force supposed to flow through a body. Bad health is often attributed to an obstruction to a person's qi.
No single word has had a greater impact on Scrabble than this simple two-letter word. When it was first introduced into the Scrabbler's lexicon in the 1990s, Q-stick endgames virtually became a thing of the past. In almost all games now, a player can unload the Q onto a floating I, if they don't have one themself, to avoid the dreaded 20 point endgame catastrophe.
To show how important this single word is amongst a fellowship of nearly one quarter of a million Scrabble words, a computer simulation of one million games, performed some years ago, confirmed that QIwas played in more games than any other word.
It seems that QI is to Scrabble as ERA is to crosswords.

SARDOODLEDOM*

n. Used in a derogatory way to describe a dramatization that is contrived and unconvincing (as in 'so much Sardoodledom').
Don't believe me? Ask this kid...

THIONINE

n. A dark crystalline powder yielding a violet dyestuff (hence its other name, Phenylene Violet) used in microscopy as a stainer. Also spelled THIONIN.
The combining form THIO-, meaning sulphur, usually signifies a chemical compound which has been formed by replacing certain oxygen atoms by sulphur atoms. The long list of Scrabbly chemicals produced in this way includes: THIOFURAN, THIOL, THIONATE,THIONYL, THIOPHEN (also, THIOPHENE), THIOTEPA, and the frequently spotted five-vowel-eight THIOUREA.
The reason I singled out THIONINE from this impressive list comes from yet another delicious Scrabble anecdote from the delightful book Word Freak, by Stefan Fatsis...
In a 1999 World Scrabble Championship match between two of the world's best players, Nigel Richards and Adam Logan, an early play ofTHIONINE was extended first to ETHIONINE, and then again later in the game to the ten-letter gem METHIONINE!
Remarkably, both players knew this grand hooking sequence - the kind of once-in-a-lifetime play that Scrabble players live for.

UNUNUNIUM

n. A temporary scientific name assigned to the chemical element with atomic number 111 until the existence of this element has been formally ratified.
Want to know more about this one? Here is an article I wrote about Unununium one day at work when I was really bored. You'll find lots of other cool words in this article too!

WATERZOOI

n. A type of broth based on fish or chicken, with vegetables, cooked in a thick stock.
This word would make perfect grist for the Balderdash mill. After all, surely it will be easy to convince your opponents that waterzooi are 'small, hirsute, water-borne creatures'.
Be that as it may, this is not the reason for including this one on my list of cool words...
In 1995, Jim Geary, a professional Poker player cum Scrabble expert, reported on a brilliant endgame. In the dying moments of the game Geary was 90 points behind and held the rack B-E-E-I-O-R-W. He played off the letters B-E calculating a 1/68 chance of replacing these letters with A-T. It worked, allowing him to play ... you guessed it ...

ZYzzYVA

n. A type of weevil often referred to as a snouted beetle.

Famous among word play enthusiasts for being the last word in the English dictionary, it is sometimes even used to mean the last word on a subject.I like the following clue provided in the New York Times crossword of Saturday, December 11, 1999...
Insect that's the last word in the Scrabble Players Dictionary
Here's an example sentence...
Despite popular belief, ZYZZYVA is not, in fact, the ZYZZYVA of Scrabble.
And speaking of Scrabble, if you're wondering about the lower casezz in the title, you probably don't play it enough.

P.S. ZYZZYVA is also the name of a very cool Scrabble Helper.

ZZZ

n. An informal term for sleep.

But if you think at last you have found the ZYZZYVA of Scrabble... well... not quite. The plural is good too!

Aside from being the most frequently appearing word in mosquito spelling bees, ZZZ is one of only two words allowed in Scrabble containing a sequence of three repeated letters. The other is BRRR, an expression usually accompanied by a shiver. If you're a canine, you might write a grumpy letter of complaint to the Scrabble authorities, signing off with a sarcastic GRRR*.

Well, that's about it from me for now, but there's no reason the fun should stop there...

Sneaky Scrabble Words

For People Who Play To Win

KWYJIBO n. a big, dumb, balding North
American ape, with no chin — Bart Simpson
...and a short temper — Marge Simpson

Suppose near the end of a close game, you are leading by a small margin and decide to block the board to prevent your opponent from going out with a big score.To do this, you place a C in an awkward position 'knowing' that your opponent cannot make a parallel play.

To your dismay, however, your opponent places their H under the C to form CH, for just enough points to devastate your plans!

The problem here was that although you knew it was time to play defensively and block the board, you did not realize that the board was not really blocked because you did not know the word CH (a Scottish personal pronoun).

The lesson to take away is this...

Scrabble strategy sits on top of word knowledge, and therefore you must know lots of weird and wonderful Scrabble words before you worry about fine-tuning your strategic game. In other words, although both components of the game are very important, word knowledge is more urgent because strategy depends on it.

But what exactly are all the words allowed in Scrabble? I'm glad you asked...

Official Scrabble Words

Just what constitutes an allowable word in Scrabble can vary from place to place. Fortunately, you only have to worry about two of those places:North America, and the Rest of the World (United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and so on).

Why? Because there are two owners of the Scrabble trademark, and each one has its own official word list. Your decision then is pretty simple...

Here is where you can find a dictionary of all

words allowed in North American Scrabble
And here is where you can get yourself a dictionary of all

words allowed in International Scrabble
Of course, if you want to play Scrabble online, or enter an international tournament, you might want to get your hands on a copy of both of these tomes.

As always, there's a bit more to it than this. For more information you can read my Official Scrabble Word List (Long Version).

Scrabble Word Lists

If you're serious about winning at Scrabble, no matter how strategically brilliant you might be, you simply must sit down at some stage and learn hundreds (preferably thousands!) of words.

The best way to do this is to organize words into lists, each of which should have some kind of strategic importance. So here are some lists of very important Scrabble words to get you started. Each of the following links will take you to a page of useful words with a preamble explaining why you should learn them...

Collins Scrabble Words (CSW12)

Words with a Q that is not followed by a U
All Two Letter Words Allowed in Scrabble
All Three Letter Words Allowed in Scrabble
Most Important Four Letter Words in Scrabble
Most Important Seven Letter Words in Scrabble
Most Important Eight Letter Words in Scrabble

Scrabble Word of the Day Archive

Daily Scrabble Words for March 2012

Cool Scrabble Words

Well, I did call this page 'Scrabble Words from AA to ZZZ', so...

Let's get a feel for the sorts of weird and wonderful words that are allowed in Scrabble. Below is a list containing an interesting and unusual Scrabble word for each letter of the alphabet. I'll give a brief definition here, but if I've talked about a word in more detail elsewhere at Word-BuffI'll format the word as a link...

AA

n. A type of lava.

BHOOT

n. a ghost, or other supernatural being in Indian mythology.

Bhoots are usually assumed to be trapped between death and a more permanent after-life as a result of some unsatisfactory ending to their life on earth.
Although bhoots often take on a human form, if you look carefully there are some giveaways. The most spooky giveaway in my opinion is the fact that their feet are back to front, with the heels facing forwards and the toes facing backwards.
While you're checking out their feet, by the way, you will probably also notice that they don't actually touch the ground, but rather float just above the surface of the earth.
About the only places I've actually come across the word bhoot 'in the wild' have been in the titles of second-rate Bollywood ghost-movies I was stuck watching in my hotel room in India a while back. Like this one...


Anagram: BOOTH
Variant: BHUT

CHLORODYNE

n. A medicine used for its hypnotic effect and pain relieving qualities.

GJETOST

n. A dark-brown Norwegian cheese, made primarily from goat's milk.

OTARINE

adj. Relating to a family of eared seals.

QI

n. The life-force presumed in Chinese medicine to flow through the body.

REREDOS

n. An ornamental paneled screen, usually located behind an altar.

UNUNUNIUM

n. The formal name used to describe the chemical element with atomic number 111 until its existence is confirmed, at which point it will be given 'proper' name.

WATERZOOI

n. A thick broth based on fish or chicken and vegetables.

ZZZ

n. The sound used in cartoons to denote sleeping.

How to Improve Vocabulary

Practical Vocabulary Building Strategies

First, I'm going to give you a handful of very effective techniques you can use to improve vocabulary for the 'real world'. But I don't want to stop there...

You see, Word Buff is primarily devoted to helping you win at word games. And the kinds of words you meet in word games are not what most people would call 'real world' words. Heck, some like to claim that many of these words are not even 'real' words at all!

So, after these introductory vocabulary building tips I'm going to invite you to join me on a fun excursion into the world of what I call word game vocabulary. To do this, I've put together a free 5 part email tutorialthat will really turbo-charge your vocabulary.

If you want to master Scrabble, crossword puzzles, or spelling bees — or if you just love learning weird and wonderful words — I think you'll enjoy it!
But we have to learn to walk before we can run...
Tips to Improve Vocabulary
Part I - Improve Vocabulary for Real Life

In my opinion, what marks a person with an excellent vocabulary is not that they spray the room with obscure words that get their listeners scrambling for the nearest dictionary, but rather that they use exactly the right word in exactly the right situation.

Now don't get me wrong - it is certainly true that a person who does this will often also know a bunch of really unusual words, but for the most part you only need to know a relatively small number of words to express yourself perfectly in most real world situations. The trick is to know these words inside out. You need to know them so well that they just come out of your mouth unconsciously as you try to express yourself.

How do you make this happen?

As always, there is no magic formula, but I've put together a few concrete strategies to improve vocabulary that I have found extremely effective. This list could easily extend to 100, of course, but I've tried to focus on the techniques I consider to be most effective and powerful.

You'll notice, for example, that I don't mention subscribing to Word of the Day services. Not because these services are bad or anything - it's just that they really don't do much to improve your vocabulary. (I'll talk more about daily word services another time.)
Create Vocabulary Lists

It is far easier to recall words that are grouped together into meaningful lists than to recall words that appear at random.

There are lots of useful themes you can use to compile vocabulary lists, but here are three I find useful...
Meanings — This is the most obvious way to categorize words and involves slotting each word into a topic the word is about. Examples I've used include Islamic Terms and Emotive Words.
Books — When I read a book and find myself looking up words on every second page, I'll compile a vocabulary list for that book.
Etymology — My most well-worn list in this category is Common Latin Words and PhrasesI'm sure you can think of other list headings that are more suitable for your own purposes. If you're preparing to sit a vocabulary exam, for example, you might have a list called GRE Exam - Masters Level.


Read Usage Examples

Read the following sentences and try to work out what the bolded word means (even if you think you know, read them anyway)...
"They are free to be energetic and enterprising; they are equally free to be lethargic and dilatory..."

"Some letters, however, suggest that Leapor was rather dilatory, and may not have done much work in the winter."

"they resorted to dilatory tactics, forcing a postponement of talks."

"This power may be used, for example, where there is likely to be a delay in allocating the case to a named guardian on the panel or where the guardian is being dilatory in appointing a solicitor."Did you guess that dilatory is an adjective describing someone who is a bit slow to act and/or given to procastination. I bet you did ;-)

See how powerful word usage examples are? They are so powerful that you could actually learn the meaning of words by reading a small collection of contextual uses without even looking up the word's definition!

In fact, if you think about it, that's how we do most of our vocabulary building in the world. We read and hear words in context and eventually work out what they mean without even trying to (as long as we hear them frequently enough).

Why not speed up the process by studying usage examples carefully and deliberately rather than waiting for examples to turn up in front of you. You will be amazed how much more quickly you can improve vocabulary this way, compared with normal reading.
Use Image Associations

Look at the following word and picture for a few seconds, and then close your eyes and try to erase the association...





Any luck? Of course not. You'll hear me say this time and time again on this site...

Your brain loves pictures. So use them!



If you look at this image 10 to 20 times, with the word CONTUMACIOUS right next to it each time, you will have no trouble recalling what this word means next time you see it in context.

There's a reason I chose this word for my example, by the way. Many people think images only work with concrete nouns, but here we have a perfect image to solidify an abstract adjective!

Sometimes you have to work pretty hard to come up with an image that conveys the sense of an unusual word, but if you really want to improve vocabulary, I assure you it's well worth the effort.
Use Vocabulary Software

There were plenty of people with great vocabularies on this planet before it was invaded by computers. You only need to read a literary classic to see that. So you certainly don't need computer software to become a master of words.

However, there is absolutely no doubt that software will help you improve vocabulary far more efficiently than pen-and-paper ever will. A good vocabulary building application enables you...
Search for words, meanings, and examples in a fraction of a second.
Test yourself using flashcards, without the messy card-stuffed shoeboxes!
Monitor your performance on the vocabulary lists you're trying to master.



I don't want to sidetrack this topic to discuss vocabulary building software in detail here, so let me just point you to the vocabulary builder I use nowadays.
Tips to Improve Vocabulary
Part II - Improve Vocabulary for Word Games

Ok, are you ready to graduate?

You see, words like DILATORY and CONTUMACIOUS are great for enriching your real world vocabulary, but they won't be enough to master Scrabble, Spelling Bees, or Crossword Puzzles. For that, you're going to need to bring in the heavy artillery...

Did you know that QIVIUT is wool taken from the undercoat of a musk ox? How about that UPSILON is the 20th letter of the Greek alphabet? No? Well, surely you know that GJETOST is a sweet Norwegian cheese made from goat's milk?

Collins Scrabble Dictionaries

http://www.collinslanguage.com/scrabble-titles

Quote

"It's one thing to know how to play like an expert and quite another to do it all the time."

— Cecilia Le