Welcome to the Jerusalem Scrabble Club
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Director: Elana Simons, 054 220 6238, elanalibby@gmail.com
THIS WEEK AT THE CLUB
Season 84, Week 24 of 25 – February 3, 2026
Gematria, the Jewish system of assigning numerical values to Hebrew letters in order to uncover hidden meanings, dates back to at least the 2nd century CE. With Season 85 starting in just two weeks, several Hebrew words with letters adding up to 85 encompass meanings that could well apply in the context of Scrabble: “discomfit, snatch up, destroy utterly”; but also “attain, finish” and “reach the mark.” Here’s hoping our coming season is characterized by more wins than losses, more delight than discomfiture. And note: GEMATRIA is good in our dictionary.
Peta walked around with her camera recording get-well messages from club members to Avi. He is currently undergoing chemotherapy, and our wishes and prayers are for a refua shlema.
In the contest for the best Tu Bishvat word, Dahlia took it away with GRAPE. She gets free entry to the club next week.
One player who couldn’t decide whether Steve’s REMINED was good or not (it isn’t) should definitely have challenged it because it represented the difference between a just-possible win and a certain loss. She’s still shaking her head over the misjudgment. Judy set her finer feelings aside, took a leap of faith by adding an S to NEXT (“I had a feeling I’d seen it played”) and placed DUMBASS down from the triple. Both survived a challenge. Finding a dictionary definition for NEXTS is problematic; suffice it to know that WOW24 allows this plural.
In noting that Tuesday was the seventh anniversary of Ze’ev Kesselman’s passing, veteran players may have recalled that Ze’ev, a consummate Scrabble player and beloved member of the club, was an aficionado of phonies, which he would lay down with pride. This goes counter to the feeling among some players that playing phonies isn’t quite “cricket,” that it is in fact a kind of cheating – one player going so far as to declare that she doesn’t think it’s moral – but it’s an accepted part of the game, “as legitimate,” explained one A player, “as opening or closing the board, learning obscure words, managing your rack or anything else that contributes to your win. A well-crafted phony – one that follows the rules of morphology but is nevertheless not an accepted word – is a joy (for example, DONATER, which isn’t good and should be DONATOR, or DONOR). In our club it’s been a point of honor not to play phonies against players from lower divisions (unless you’re losing badly!).” To sum up, says this player, putting down phonies, choosing when to play them and against whom, is a Scrabble skill – as is choosing whether and when to challenge a play that you suspect is a phony. It’s part of the game.
OOH! Two of Peta’s games were notable in that “by the first few moves, all the O’s were gone.” In one of those games, moreover, the only other vowel on the board was an A! (A passing player noted WOODY, MOODY, MOO and TOOL.) Rena: “All my games started with a Q, two of them with QI.”
Aryeh had a top night. “I won all three, including a victory over DavidS. It might be the first time I have won three games since coming back to the club.” David: “Playing FIZ down to the triple line, placing the Z on b15, with the entire bottom row open, was tough but absolutely correct because I left myself with AO [to make AZO]; but then I drew ALATION [the state of having wings] and had to leave that triple spot. My play of KYE was also correct, especially because two U’s and the second blank were still unseen. But it left me with the Q and fewer than seven tiles in the bag. Since Aryeh held both U’s and the blank, he bled me. My only error,” David continued, “was playing DISRATED [demoted] on a very closed board; I didn’t take more time to see SOX/STRIATED for 90 points. It turned out that my best-played game of the session was my only loss.”
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 or Elana up to a week in advance.
WWW: Wendy, Aryeh, May
WOW: INHUMAN (DavidL), QUINOLS (DavidS)
PHOW:
High Win, High Loss, High Triple:
A: 534 (DavidS), 423 (DavidS), 1375 (Wendy)
B1: 563 (Yonatan), 423 (Richard), 1286 (Yonatan)
Scores over 500: 563 (Yonatan), 534 (DavidS)
100-pt play:
Attendance: 25