Crossword Nightmares

"I'm in vowel hell over here," Shameless Shirley exclaimed with great frustration.

I knew exactly how she felt. A rack of all vowels is one of the most difficult situations a player can encounter in Scrabble. Not only are these tiles worth one measly point each, but the longest word that consists of just vowels, EAU, is a mere three characters long. After a little pondering, Shirley did manage to make a pretty descent 16 point play using some consonants already on the board, yet was alarmed to find she had drawn two more vowels.

When faced with this scenario, your options are very limited. You can always swap tiles in the hope of a better draw, but this also passes the turn to your opponent, giving him/her a chance to build up a bigger lead. I personally try to avoid swapping at all costs. Instead, I attempt to use as many tiles as possible without going for the highest possible score. With this method I can get some new letters and gather up a few points as well to keep my opponent from running away with the game.

Of course, vowel block is not the lowest circle of Scrabble hell.

This is a closed board, a board on which it is very difficult to make a play. After the first four turns of a recent game, the tiles were in this nightmarish configuration. In fact the scenario was so bad, I only had one possible play. See if you can find it in my letters.

Q U A V W I A

The final score of this game did not end up being very high because it remained very hard to create words throughout the game. While sometimes it's good to clump tiles together and create two or three words in one play, there's something to be said for opening up the board. The best players know when to use both methods to achieve the highest scores.

Maybe the worst punishment for any Scrabble player is the lexical obsession it creates. Some zealous people create flashcards of common seven-letter words to get an inside edge. Other players begin to dream letter tiles. (Shameless Shirley once dreamed of a Scrabble game where she kept saying to herself, "If only I had an R.") Another person might become crazy enough to start a whole blog about a silly board game. In any case, as the obsession grows, games become more and more intense until one day you build your own stairway down to Hades.

Maybe the only way to end Scrabble hell is to freeze it over, so this week I have selected all the four-letter words that contain ICE. Hopefully these words will save you from a fate as nerdy as mine.

BICE, n., a pale blue pigment
DICE, n.pl. of DIE, a cube used for games; v., to cut into cubes
FICE, n., a small, snappy, mixed-breed dog
ICED, v.perf. of ICE, to cool with ice; adj., very cold
ICES, v.pres. of ICE, to cool with ice; n.pl. of ICE, frozen water
LICE, n.pl. of LOUSE, a small parasitic insect
MICE, n.pl. of MOUSE, a small rodent
NICE, adj., neat, pleasant, pretty
PICE, n., a former coin of India and Pakistan
RICE, n., a cereal plant; v., to mash into very small pieces
SICE, n., a male servant of India
VICE, n., a bad habit; adj., lower in status than

-Jiff Z. Moneyer

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