On the Up & Up

This blog is mostly about 4 and 5 letter words that begin with the letters UP. In fact the quiz is to see how many of the 4 letter words you can think of before we move on to the list.

It sounds easy doesn’t it? In fact some of them are easy and there are only a total of 7 words in all, but I will be surprised if you manage to get all 7.

The blog needs to be filled in with another list first so that you can’t immediately see the answers to the quiz. Stop right here and write down as many of those 4 letter UP words as you can think of. Don't scroll down until you are ready

PHANG A Shakespearian verb meaning to seize in the teeth

PLAID A long piece of woollen cloth

PLEAD To beg for earnestly

PLINK To shoot at tin cans

PLOOK A Scottish word for a pimple

PRATE To talk foolishly

PROLL An obsolete spelling of prowl

I am sure you will have spotted that those are not UP words. However they all become 6 letter UP words by hooking a U in front of them. They could definitely be a good scoring opportunity.

UPHANG, UPLAID, UPLEAD, UPLINK, UPLOOK, UPRATE & UPROLL

There are a few more like this, but all the other ones include the letter S and it is less likely that an S will have been played in a 5 letter word.

OK, now I can give you the 4 letter UP list:

UPAS A Malaysian tree with a poisonous drip. Note: upa is NOT a word

UPBY A little further on

UPDO An upswept hairdo

UPGO To go up

UPON On

UPSY A carousal – boisterous drinking party

UPTA Australian slang to describe something of poor quality

The last one is quite interesting. It seems to me that TAPU, which is a word we are most familiar with in New Zealand, is played quite frequently. I can’t recall UPTA ever being played. Maybe it would fit in a better spot and score more points or maybe it would be worth an extra 5 points for a challenge. Another benefit could be if your opponent tries to put an S on it which you would challenge off or if you were able to get the right letter for the cunning hook which it does take. The next list is all the words of 5 letters which start with UP:

UPBOW A type of stroke in playing a stringed instrument

UPBYE A little further on. The same as UPBY

UPDOS Upswept hairdos

UPDRY To dry completely

UPEND To turn upside down

UPJET To spout upwards

UPLAY To hoard

UPLED Led up

UPLIT Lit to a higher brightness

UPPED Raised

UPPER The part of a boot or shoe above the sole

UPRAN Ran up

UPRUN To run up

UPSEE A carousal, the same as UPSY

UPSET To overturn

UPSEY A carousal. Another spelling of UPSY and UPSEE

UPTIE To tie up

UPTER Australian slang for something of poor quality. Same as UPTA

UPTAK Scottish for UPTAKE. As in "he is gleg on the uptak.

K is the surprise hook for UPTA It can be extended to UPTAKE or UPTAKS

After you have read read this list it should be tapu to play TAPU unless it clearly gets you a better score than UPTA

That is enough for today. If I continued to give you all the 6 letter words starting with UP that would be another 120 words! Too long for this blog

Happy Scrabbling

Patrick