More Scrabble Words

Continuing with my effort to support my coworker Scrabble aficionados, here is more from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_words_with_uncommon_properties:

“The highest-scoring words that would fit on a Scrabble board are benzoxycamphors (45), sesquioxidizing (42) (sesquioxidized is in the OED), or oxyphenbutazone (41) (in both the TWL06 and SOWPODS official scrabble dictionaries).” TWL06 refers to the Scrabble Tournament Word Listing for 2006; it contains 178,691 words, some as few as two and some as many as fifteen letters long. SOWPODS is the word list used in most places outside the United States. It is a combination of and its name an anagram of the acronyms for the two main Scrabble dictionaries, the OSPD (Official Scrabble Players Dictionary) and the OSW (Official Scrabble Words).

Back to words: “With the Q and Z fortuitously on the double-letter-score squares, 'sesquioxidizing' played across an edge of the board (which has three triple word squares) could score (62 × 27) + 50 = 1724 by itself (the additional 50 points being awarded for using all seven letters on the player's own rack.” That might be worth remembering, for that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to use it. And it beats by over 80 points the next highest scoring word: benzoxycamphors. “Benzoxycamphors would score (59 × 27) + 50 = 1643 while oxyphenbutazone would score (54 × 27) + 50 = 1508.”

The problem is, a player in Scrabble has only seven letters in their rack. That means that “8 of the 15 letters of these words need to be on the board already. Using SOWPODS words only in the rest of the game, single move scores could hypothetically be obtained of 1785 points with oxyphenbutazone and 2044 points with sesquioxidizing.” The likelihood of any of these words ever being useful is infinitesimally small. So let’s look as some other words that might come in useful.
Aia is a Brazilian bird, ooecia is the plural of a part of the reproductive system of some primitive animals, and then there’s always aureola and aureolae (the plural of aureola).

Short on vowels? Try hymn, lynx, lynch, myth, pygmy, gypsy, myrrh, nymph, lymph, flyby, or syzygy. Of course, since there’s only two “y”s in a Scrabble game, syzygy won’t help. Neither will zyzzyx, which is a type of wasp and reminds me of the exit on the interstate between Barstow and Las Vegas for the town named Zzyzx.

In case you’re not aware, Scrabble has become an international tournament game with every bit as much stress and study as chess or a spelling bee. (And lest we get too far away from my normal blog routine, the word bee meaning a “meeting of neighbors to unite their labors for the benefit of one of their members”, the origin of its use in the phrase spelling bee, is an American construction first used in 1769. It was used because the activity of a bee – whether a quilting bee or spelling bee – is similar in comparison to the activity in a hive. Spelling bee itself as a term was first used in 1809.)