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 85, Week 10 of 25 – June 2, 2026
Yonatan, returned from a lengthy stay in the US that didn’t include much Scrabble, needn’t have worried about his Scrabble skills rusting: He won two of his three games, the first 448-339. A jokey onlooker credited his spiffy new “killer board” acquired during his trip and said she would refuse to use it.
DavidS, overhearing a group of players discussing the fact that the British Scrabble lexicon contains a great many more words than the American one and that it also pairs the Z with E and O to make two-letter words, joined in to vent his feelings. Broadening the discussion, he pointed out how non-English Scrabble lexicons differ from the English ones.
“For example, in the French lexicon, W, Y and K are 10 points each. The Y is also worth points in the German dictionary. This is because those letters are rarely used in those languages and, therefore, are harder to play on a Scrabble board. So it is curious why the powers that be have never changed the tile values in either the American or British lexicons. For example, when the Q and Z were set at 10 points, no two-letter words could be made with either power tile. But now that QI and ZA are in the dictionary, Q and Z should be worth less than 10. By the same token, the V, which can’t be part of a two-letter word, should count for more than four. More egregious is the British lexicon, where ZE and ZO are also good. The result is that, playing Collins, it is simply too much of an advantage to draw the Z when it can do so much damage with a face value of 10 points.”
Player: “So are there any aspects of the British game that make it more challenging, interesting, or fun?”
DavidS: “Challenging, because the lexicon is so vast that even experts – unless they’re named Nigel Richards [universally regarded as the greatest competitive Scrabble player in history] – sometimes make mistakes. It has about 30 percent more words than our dictionary! And none of those words are ‘normal,’ or they’d be in our dictionary. The other key difference is that a bad challenge doesn’t lose your turn. You only add five points to your opponent’s play. But if you get challenged on a phony, you do lose your turn.”
Player: “When you say ‘not normal’ do you mean those words aren’t real ones found in a dictionary?”
DavidS: “CH, OO, AIA, AUA, EUOI. I could go on and on. IWI, UWU….”
Player: “So by what logic or reason are they there?”
DavidS: “Good question! Maori words, Afrikan words, etc.”
Player: “We do have, for example, words like VROW. And, truth to tell, I’ve never heard or read of anyone saying ‘Let’s order a za’!”
DavidS: “Supposedly, it’s used in the American Midwest… but I lived in Chicago for three years, and I never heard it.”
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, Rena, Lisa
WOW: SUAVEST (May), RAWHIDE (Dahlia), ZAIDIES (Richard)
PHOW: OOLYTES (DavidS) PIROGIS* (Jonathan), IMAGEMEN (Dahlia)
*PIROGIES, PIEROGI and PIEROGIES are all good
High Win, High Loss, High Triple:
A: 476 (Dahlia), 413 (Dahlia), 1402 (DavidS)
B1: 461 (Pauline), 339 (Judy), 1107 (Lisa)
Scores over 500:
100-pt play:
Attendance: 20