How Many Words For One Dish?

Mary Gray made an excellent play at club this week. The tiles she had were:

? A L N O P S

There are only 8 possible 7 letter words that can be played and Mary found the only one of those 8 words which put the S in 5th position which was needed so she could cover both double word squares.

Have a go and see if you can find any bingos at all. None of the 8 words is easy, so don’t be discouraged if you can’t find any. I doubt that even A Grade players will find many of them.

Answers are at the bottom of the page as usual.

While you are pondering that we will make LP the combination of the week and have a look at some interesting 5 letter words to play with LP and 3 vowels:

PELAU These 4 words are different spellings of a dish with seasoned

PILAU rice and meat. As well as the 4 spellings there is also PILAF, PILAFF,

PILAO PILAW, PILOW and PILLAU. Nine ways to spell the same dish. Maybe

PULAO it just makes it impossible for restaurants to misspell it on the menu!

LOIPE A track for cross-country skiing. You can only play LOIPEN, not an S

PAOLO An obsolete papal coin. Does not take an S. The plural is PAOLI

PAOLI

APIOL An oily liquid derived from parsley

POULE A chicken. Only extends to POULES. If you want more hooks play…

LOUPE A jeweller’s eyeglass. LOUPES, but also LOUPED and LOUPEN

POILU A French infantry soldier in World War 1

ELPEE A long playing record

OLPAE A Greek jug

PALEA Inner structure of a grass flower. PALEAE and PALEAL, but not S

PILAE The only plural of PILA, an anatomical structure like a pillar

PILEA The gunpowder plant, or the Chinese money plant.

PILEI The plural of PILEUS, the umbrella shaped part of a mushroom

So to return to the quiz:

Mary’s great play to get the double-double was to make the blank an S:

SPONSAL Related to sponsalia or nuptials. Something to do with weddings

That was a new one to me and I gave Mary an extra 5 points for the challenge. I am still not sure exactly what it is, but it did make me wonder if SPOUSE and SPOUSAL are related words.

The other 7 possible plays are all unusual as well.

ESPANOL A native of spain.An extra S is no good, but ESPANOLES is right

NOPALES A cactus plant of Central America

OILPANS Oil sumps

POLLANS The plural of POLLAN . A whitefish found in Ireland

PLASMON The entirety of genetic material in a cell

PROLANS The plural of PROLAN, a hormone used to test for pregnancy.

PONGALS The plural of PONGAL, a dish of cooked rice in Tamil speaking India.

A rice dish. And there is only one way to spell it. Good grief!

Happy Scrabbling

Patrick