NNY or NNIE Mar 15

At the tournament last weekend I played RONNY against Lawson. After we scored it I commented that it might have been worth a challenge because although we both knew RONNIES is a word - it is Irish slang for moustaches - sometimes the singular of words like that are spelled with a Y and sometimes it has to be an -IE ending.

I am going to deal with all 5 vowels with both of those endings, but we will start with O.

BONNY BONNIE

DONNY CONNIE

NONNY RONNIE

SONNY YONNIE

BONNY / BONNIE is the only one that is good with both endings. There are 3 that must have Y and 3 that must have IE. NONNY is a meaningless word in ballads. CONNIE is a train or bus conductor and YONNIE is an Australian child's word for a stone.

CANNY CANNIE

DANNY

FANNY FANNIE

JANNY SANNIE

NANNY TANNIE

C and F take both endings, but DANNY, JANNY, NANNY, SANNIE and TANNIE must be spelled in one specific way. Of those the most interesting is JANNY which is a verb meaning to act as a disguised merrymaker at Christmas.

FINNY

GINNY

HINNY HINNIE

LINNY

MINNY MINNIE

NINNY

PINNY PINNIE

TINNY TINNIE

With an I there are no words that must be spelled -IE. 4 of them must be a Y and 4 of them that can take either spelling.

Then we come to words ending in ENNY and UNNY, and there are lots of them, in fact a total of 17. However there are no words ending ENNIE or UNNIE. And I don't just mean 6 letter words. There are no words of any length with those endings. It is an interesting question why ANNIE, INNIE, and ONNIE are endings for 12 words of 6 letters, but ENNIE and UNNIE are not used at all. I thought BUNNIE would be OK, but apparently not.

BENNY, FENNY, GENNY, HENNIE, JENNY, PENNY, TENNY, WENNY.

BUNNY, DUNNY, FUNNY, GUNNY, NUNNY,

PUNNY, RUNNY, SUNNY, TUNNY.

My play was a bit unlucky in that I played a 5 letter word with a Y when there a total of only 5 words that MUST end with -IE (CONNIE, RONNIE, YONNIE, SANNIE, TANNIE).

Well, maybe it wasn't THAT unlucky...... Lawson didn't challenge.

Happy Scrabbling

Patrick