Roger Cole-Baker invented a piece of new terminology last year. It is blanking out, and refers to the condition where you have great trouble thinking of any bonus words because you have two blanks. At the Howick tournament he showed me one where Dianne Cole-Baker had EEIOS with two blanks. She did find a bonus word to play, but on investigating later they discovered there was 42 possible 7 letter words. With a totally different combination Cicely Bruce from the Whangarei Club

Sometimes you can score well, not with a bonus word, but by taking a smaller score to set yourself up for a hook that only you can take advantage of and then using that hook next time to get a big score. Sometimes that can be when you have the last S in the bag, but unless the blanks are gone as well there is always the danger of your opponent placing their bingo their using a blank as an S. A set up for one of the big 5 which have no 2nd letter is a lot safer because even if

Have a try at finding the words in the letter combinations below: A P I L N O S E H I L L O O A C I L N 0 S There are only 3 words, so have a go at the quiz before you move on. Just before I give you the answers to those we’ll have a quick look at the 7 letter words you might play if your rack was PETROL with a blank. I will put the blank letter in lower case: PROLaTE Having flat

The dictionary says that OMA is a term for a German grandmother. It is a common word to see on the scrabble board because it might be played when somebody hooks an O in from of MA or it might be played when OM gets an A put after it. There is an alternative spelling for a German grandmother – OUMA – but that seems to be played less often. Anyway, this quiz is on how well you know your OMA and OUMA. In both cases the only letter to go after them is an S, but do you know what l