Out of the Woods into the Vowels

Sorry that I have been a bit late with the blog this week. It is now Monday morning and I am watching Tiger Woods completing his comeback in the last event of the year. So that can be the quiz this time. How many 7 letter words can you think of that end with the last 4 letters being WOOD. There are 21 of them, but it would be unfair to ask you to think of them all, so see if you can think of 10 before you look at the answers.

There are some 8 letter words that have 5, or even 6, vowels. It is always fun to make a bingo out of an unlikely looking set of letters. At the tournament this weekend I had two near misses with words that I would have loved to play.

The first was with a rack of AEIIOGN. There was a B available on the board to play IBOGAINE (An alkaloid used as an antidepressant) but it was in not quite the right place as it would have run one space too far down the board. Damn!

The second was even more annoying because I saw an opportunity to play a really unusual word. My rack was an unlikely looking AAAEGSS. Three A’s don’t often make a bingo, but in a moment of rare inspiration I saw an opportunity. All that was needed was my opponent to make an opening play with a word containing an I and ASSEGAAI could be played. It is a variant spelling of a Zulu spear which can also be spelled ASSEGAI or ASSAGAI. Damn, damn and double damn!

Isn’t is weird how you can spot something as weird as that, but inspiration failed when I had the much easier rack of AEGLRU? The best spot finished to the right hand side of GU, but I was so fixated on finding a word ending in UR to go in that spot that I never thought of EARPLUG

Oh well, back to the drawing board.

Have a look at these 8 letter words with 6 vowels:

ABOIDEAU or ABOITEAU A tide gate

AUREOLAE A plural or AUREOLA which is a halo

EULOGIAE A plural of EULOGIA which is a blessing or a holy bread

EPOPOEIA An epic poem also spelled EPOPEE or EPOS

Those are the only ones that have 6 vowels. There are too many words with 5 vowels to list. I think some of the easier ones to find are those that start with AUTO, so here is the complete list of the one which start with the letters AUT:

AUTACOID or AUTOCOID A hormone secreted into blood or sap

AUTOCADE A procession of motor cars

AUTOCUES Text devices used to assist newsreaders

AUTODIAL To dial a telephone number automatically

AUTOGIRO An aircraft with rotating wings. Also AUTOGYRO

AUTOLOAD To load automatically

AUTOMATA A plural of AUTOMATON, a machine to mimic a living creature

AUTOMATE To convert to automatic control

AUTOPSIA An examination of a corpse. Also AUTOPSY

AUTOSAVE Use a facility which automatically saves at predetermined intervals

AUTOSOME A chromosome other than a sex chromosome

AUTOTUNE Software that manipulates a vocal track until it is in tune

AUTUNITE A fluorescent ore of uranium

Tiger won the golf. I hope you were as successful with the WOOD quiz:

BARWOOD BAYWOOD BOGWOOD

BOWWOOD BOXWOOD BUDWOOD

CAMWOOD DAGWOOD DOGWOOD

DYEWOOD ELMWOOD FATWOOD

FIRWOOD GUMWOOD INKWOOD

LOGWOOD NUTWOOD OAKWOOD

PLYWOOD REDWOOD SAPWOOD

Cheers Patrick