Welcome to the Jerusalem Scrabble Club

COME PLAY WITH US – VISITORS ALWAYS WELCOME!

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 Director: Elana Simons, 054 220 6238, elanalibby@gmail.com

 THIS WEEK AT THE CLUB

Season 85, Week 24 of 25 –September 8, 2026

We were happy to see JoeW back after his “reinitiation” to the club last week. Elana challenged his opening play of SOOTING, but it’s sootable… er, suitable, describing a process by which a surface becomes stained with dark carbon dust.

Scrabble will take place as usual next Tuesday, though we will not be meeting during the week of Succot. In honor of the New Year, Elana announced a competition for the best Rosh Hashana word, and Dahlia wins free entry next week for ATONED, Wendy following appropriately with GOD.

Facing Peta, Elana played CONJURE, “but I added my C to the word RIM to make CRIM. Although it’s slang for ‘criminal,’ WOW24 doesn’t like it and it was challenged off the board. On the next turn I played CONJURE again, but this time added my E to the end of RIM to make RIME [a coating of frost or ice].”

Referring back to a recent observation that neither RETONES nor RENOTES, though often essayed, are good, Rena informed us that the only acceptable bingo using those letters is ESTRONE, a natural estrogen.

Reported phonies that didn’t make it were BURPER, FIVING and GOALIED. Richard wowed everyone who heard about it with his OPUNTIA, a cactus popularly known as prickly pear. “I figured that the word PAINT appears very frequently on our racks,” he explained, “and so I began making a list of words that contain those letters. Opuntia is one of them.”

How a phony turned respectable: Judy lengthened the legitimate ALLOW to ALLOWERS in order to land the S on a triple. It isn’t good, but went unchallenged. She later prefixed a W to make WALLOWER, which is good. Finally, Gila needed no encouragement to place her S on the left triple square to make SWALLOWER, earning 57 points for the move.

What’s the maximum number of letters a Scrabble word can have? The limit is 15, the number of squares across the board. At the Exeter, New Hampshire, club tourney on March 20, 2005, the word CONTENT was played by Ed Liebfried. It was extended by Keith Hagel to CONTENTMENTS, after which Ed made the final 15-letter DISCONTENTMENTS. Ken Clark similarly played RECONSIDERATION at a September 1990 tournament in Portland, Oregon.

 If you missed the opportunity to communicate your hilite in person at the club you can email it to judymo@netvision.net.il or WhatsApp it (054-5552355) up until noon the following day. If you wish to mark any occasion by bringing refreshments to the club, please check with Susan up to a week in advance.

WWW: DavidS, Susan, Judy

WOW:  OPUNTIA (Richard), CONJURE (Elana)

PHOW:

High Win, High Loss, High  Triple:

A: 602 (DavidS), 440 (Steve), 1462 (DavidS)

B1: 434 (Judy), 416 (Yonatan), 1196 (Richard)

Scores over 500:  602 (DavidS)

100-pt play: RETYPING 101 (DavidS)

Attendance: 20