Randy Mandel Elected to SER International Board of Directors
March 18, 2018Living on the Edge
April 5, 2018by Liz Clift
Last month, we posted Part 1 of this blog with 10 words from our field that might improve your Scrabble game (or at the very least, help you out when you’re staring at your rack wondering what you do with those letters.
Now, we offer you Part 2. As with Part 1, points are based on the Hasbro website’s Scrabble dictionary, which assumes only the face value of tiles.
Apical (10 points) – in plants, refers to roots or shoot tips; it’s also a sound made with the tip of the tongue
Byssal (11 points) – relating to the super strong threads mollusks use to adhere to a surface
Also: byssus (but that seems like a waste of a lot of perfectly good S tiles)
Calyptra (15 points) – hood-shaped organ of flowers (according to Hasbro, anyway), but remember it as the gear that protects moss spores!
Also: calyptras
Gabbro (11 points) – a type of dark, igneous rock
Also: gabbroic (for 15 points)
Hypha (17 points) – the threadlike component of fungi
Also: hyphae
Octopod (12 points) – basically a very generic octopus; any order of an 8-armed mollusk
Also: octopods
Operculum (15 points) – the little trap door on some snails (especially marine and aquatic snails)
Radula (7 points) – a rough, tongue-like organ on mollusks (you can remember this by thinking about the radiantly toothy smiles of snails)
Also: radulas, radulae
Seiche (11 points) – oscillation of an enclosed or partially enclosed body of water, often due to changes in atmospheric pressure
Also: seiches
Thalweg (14 points) – a line defining the lowest points along the length of a riverbed or valley
Also: thalwegs
Fun fact: I’ve actually managed to use thalweg in a game of Scrabble—and got that sweet 50 point bonus at the same time! Additional fun fact? The featured image is a hydra–which is another good word for using up some bizarre tiles you might have on your board!
Study up on these 10 words—we’ll have 10 more coming at you soon!