Happy 2023

The following words are my wish list for 2023. Hopefully I don't have to wait for Christmas for Santa to give me a chance to play some of them

They are not just a random collection of words. There is a theme. They are all the words of no more than 6 letters where the total point count of the tiles adds up to exactly 23. We can only hope that '23 is better than '22

BLOWZY

Coarse and ruddy faced. Synonyms of BLOUSY and BLOWSY. Those 2 alternatives also take the extensions to BLOWZIER, BLOWZIEST and BLOWZILY

CHEQUY

Describes something that has a checkered pattern. CHECKY is a valid synonym that also extends in the same way as CHEQUIER and CHEQUIEST

CZAPKA

A Polish military cap which has been adapted from the traditional peasant cap. It does take the ordinary plural of an S - what a bingo that would be! Alternative spellings are CHAPKA and SCHAPSKA

HAMZAH. An Arabic diacritical mark. A diacritical mark, also known as a diacritic, refers to any mark, shape, stroke, or sign added or attached to a letter for a particular reason. It does not need the second H. HAMZA is also good and they both can be pluralised with an S

JAZY

A wig. One of three words on this list that I have already played. There are two alternative spelling with an S. JASY and JASEY. Plurals are JAZIES, JASIES and JASEYS

JYNXES

You could be forgiven for thinking this was an alternative spelling of JINX. However that is not correct at all. A JYNX is a WRYNECK which is a bird related to woodpeckers.

PACZKI

A round filled doughnut from Poland. Not available in my bakery. but who knows, maybe they will be one day. I wouldn't have to explain what CIABATTA or CIABATTE mean, but I might have had to 20 years ago

SCHIZY

Affected with schizophrenia. The extensions of SCHIZIER or SCHIZIEST are good too. Playing one of those would give you opponent some real mental problems!

SQUIZ

A quick close look. The most commonly played word on this list. If you want to pluralise it you need a blank for a second Z in SQUIZZES. Note that it is only a noun, not a verb. Squizzed sounds good, but the computer would disallow it

ZAMBUK

A New Zealand word, describing a member of the St John's ambulance service, especially one on duty at a sporting event. It can also be spelled ZAMBUCK

ZEBECK

A Mediterranean sailing boat with 3 masts and both square and triangular sails. XEBEC and ZEBEC are both good, but not xebeck

ZEPHYR

A gentle breeze, I was lucky enough to get the right letters for this one last year. Maybe I had the right letters for some of the other ones as well, but just overlooked the possibility

ZYTHUM

A malt beer which was made by the ancient Egyptians

Don't expect to play any of these tonight on the first scrabble club night of the year. On the other hand you never know when lightning will strike!

I will try to make the next blog about something with a higher probability

Happy Scrabbling and Happy New Year

Patrick