Opening Move
Shameless Shirley, my good friend and constant word game companion, is a much happier player when she has the first turn in a game of Scrabble. If a draw for play order goes my way three or more games in a row, she begins to question the very idea of probability. "It's not fair," she sighs, "you always get to go first." My answer is always the same. "Don't forget the first scene of 'Rosencrantz and Guilenstern Are Dead.'"
Certainly there is an advantage to going first in a game. The opening move receives an automatic double word score, a word of five letters or more will get an additional double letter score, and there is no need to worry about where to put your tiles. The board is a blank slate just waiting for you to set the tone and tempo. The tough part becomes forcing a higher scoring tile toward either the beginning or the end of the word. Let's take an example:
T W E L T A S
There are many different plays here, but the W is the only letter worth more than one point so it is important to get it to the beginning or end of the word for maximum scoring. This particular example has no five-letter words that end in W, but try to find five five-letter words that begin with it. There is also one six-letter word and one-seven-letter word. Answers are at the bottom.
The opening move may be the easiest time to use all your tiles at once because you don't have to worry about hooking your word to anything else, but you have to have a pretty thorough vocabulary of old, obsolete, and obscure words if you want to take advantage very often. Consider the highest scoring opening move in the game.
Certainly there is an advantage to going first in a game. The opening move receives an automatic double word score, a word of five letters or more will get an additional double letter score, and there is no need to worry about where to put your tiles. The board is a blank slate just waiting for you to set the tone and tempo. The tough part becomes forcing a higher scoring tile toward either the beginning or the end of the word. Let's take an example:
T W E L T A S
There are many different plays here, but the W is the only letter worth more than one point so it is important to get it to the beginning or end of the word for maximum scoring. This particular example has no five-letter words that end in W, but try to find five five-letter words that begin with it. There is also one six-letter word and one-seven-letter word. Answers are at the bottom.
The opening move may be the easiest time to use all your tiles at once because you don't have to worry about hooking your word to anything else, but you have to have a pretty thorough vocabulary of old, obsolete, and obscure words if you want to take advantage very often. Consider the highest scoring opening move in the game.
If you are ever lucky enough to have this 128 point play, you may not even know it. It is a very odd combination of letters. The word is an alternate plural spelling of muzhik or mujik which is defined as a Russian peasant. It is also an archaic term that refers to the time before the Bolshevik Revolution.
Even though you will probably never be able to pull off one of these rare plays I will close with a list of the eight highest scoring starting plays just in case. Lady Luck may surprise you.
MUZJIKS, n.pl., a Russian peasant, 128 points
BEZIQUE, n., a card game, 124 points
CAZIQUE, n., a tropical bird; a Latin American tribal leader, 124 points
MEZQUIT, n., a deciduous tree, 124 points
KOLHOZY, n.pl., a collective farm in Russia, 122 points
SOVKHOZ, n. a state owned farm in the former Soviet Union, 122 points
ZINKIFY, v., to coat with zinc (an element), 122 points
ZOMBIFY, v., to turn into a zombie (undead creature), 122 points
-Jiff Z. Moneyer
sǝlʇʇɐʍ 'ǝlʇʇɐʍ 'sʇlǝʍ 'slɐǝʍ 'sʇʇɐʍ 'ǝʇsɐʍ 'sǝlɐʍ :sɹǝʍsu∀
posted by Jiff Z Moneyer at
4:36 AM
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