Learn To Unlearn
One of the most frustrating parts of the game of scrabble, for me is ‘words’ that I see often stick in my memory. What’s so wrong with that, I hear you thinking? Nothing is wrong with that when it is a legal word. But the bad stuff sometimes sticks too.
Does that happen to you?
A devilish practice of the dictionary committee, in my opinion, is when they revise our word list, in addition to adding entries, they subtract others. The add-ons are much easier to learn than those which are eliminated. The entry ‘da’ has been out since OSPD2 and yet many people continue to play it. I found the former entry ‘emf’ very useful, but it too is no longer acceptable.
As director of scrabble Club #350, I sometimes find myself watching others play when the number of players is odd. I’ll see one player put down a plausible, yet phoney, word and the opponent says, “Nice play,” and the game moves forward. I’m not sure how those visions influence my memory.
Players who are visual learners, and know it, generally shun looking at phoney words. They want no part of those words seeping into their unconscious.
Are there some phonies that you play repeatedly?
One of the concepts for new players to understand is ‘what is a word’ when playing scrabble. There are many more ‘words’ that exist beyond the 155,000+ that are included in the OWL2.
I tell players that competitive scrabble is a function of memory, as pertains to a specific set of words in the OWL2, as designated by a committee. Don’t waste your time arguing that word you played is ‘real’ and in CHAMBERs. If a word not in the OWL2, it is a phoney when you are playing at CLUB #350.
Be careful out there.