Give Me A Call

For this blog you don’t have to find any 7 letter words. You just have to unscramble the letters below to find one 5 letter word and five 6 letter words

A A C L L

A A C L L H

A A C L L I

A A C L L N

A A C L L S

A A C L L U

Scrabble isn’t just about playing 7 and 8 letter words to get the 50 point bonux for a bingo. It is also about getting a reasonable score from awkward letters where there are duplications. One of the words I have played frequently when I have too many A’s and too many L’s is the 5 letter word you are being asked to find above.

I found a couple of other words recently that were those 5 letters plus another one so I thought I would make sense to try to remember those as well. After all if I have played the AACLL word quite a few times maybe the other letter was also available, either on my rack or on the board, to score even better.

So have you figured out as many of the above words as you can?

If you think you have done well with those, here is one 8 letter word just for good measure. Can you find the 8 letter word from

A A B C E M R T

The Answers:

CALLA A variety of lily native to South Africa

One of the reasons I like this word is that it provides a hook to the word CALL that might be a surprise to some opponents. You can never be sure about which of your opponents will know what piece of information, but it is good to set up spots on the board that you are familiar with. Sooner or later there will be something that your opponent does not know.

CHALLA A loaf of white leavened bread baked for the Jewish Sabbath

Another good word for hooks. CHALLAH and CHALLAN as well as CHALLAS

LAICAL Of or pertaining to a layman or a member of the laity

CALLAN A boy or fellow

There is a good hook here too. CALLANT as well as the plural CALLANS

CALLAS The plural of CALLA

CALALU A Caribbean soup made with greens, onions and crabmeat.

I hadn’t seen this word before. No hooks for this one except the usual plural, but there are several other spellings. If you like to learn 4 words for the price of one then you will want to know CALALOO, CALLALOO and CALLALOU as well.

Callaloo sounds like the ultimate portaloo. However, portaloo isn't acceptable.

And finally the 8 letter word:

CRABMEAT

This was only added as an afterthought when my spell checker didn't like this word in the description of calalu. I couldn't recall seeing it, so checked to see whether it was OK. It turns out that crabs, pigs and horses are the only animals whose names are acceptable in front of the word meat.

Other words ending in -MEAT are:

NONMEAT, NUTMEAT, BAKEMEAT, BUSHMEAT, SIDEMEAT, FARCEMEAT, FORCEMEAT, LUNCHMEAT, MINCEMEAT and SWEETMEAT

Happy Scrabbling

Patrick