Customer Reviews

Scrabble Word Building Book

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This 1991 volume is now old by 2 revisions of the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary. It was missing a few words even when it was current, and since the later revisions to OSPD, it is now short by several thousand words. My recollection is it also was not very sensibly arranged and was printed in difficult to read fonts. If you can read this review, you already have the ability to obtain word- study and list-generating software by download that is up-to-date, complete, more user friendly, and of greater utility, not to mention free, tho of course not as portable as this handy paperback.

The word building book has finally been updated after 16 years. Meanwhile the official Scrabble dictionary has been updated twice. The new edition is worthwhile, especially with the 2 and 3 letter lists which are essential for playing Scrabble well.

Meanwhile, SCRABBLE Wordbook and Bob's Bible: Words, Anagrams and Hooks offer a lot more to the beginning, serious and expert players. The Wordbook has been a staple of Scrabble tournament players since the late 1980s. It's chockful of lists and ideas for studying. It's only two drawbacks are the tiny print (for some) and the removal of words like FATSO that are legal in tournaments (it's the school edition). The author does offer free bookmarks with the missing words.

Bob's Bible is my favorite tournament study book. The latest edition includes lists of the 2s, 3s, 4s and even 5s. The main section is a full (offical) list of 2-8 letter words. Next to each word are the front hooks and the back hooks to make words one letter longer... like STAMPED e (makes stampede!) Below each word are all the anagrams. So underneath SENATOR it lists atoners, santero and treason. There are even Jumble quizzes for thousands of words you need to know. The special Q-word section has words like QI QAT QANAT QABALAH TRANQ etc and also BUQSHA, OBLOQUY, EXEQUY and COLLOQUY (not to mention MBAQANGA).

The coolest 2 sections in the book are lists of all, and only, the words that have front hooks, and a section for back hooks that change the meaning of the word or are non-standard plurals like AE. These are alphabetically listed for each word length from 2 to 8.

By all means, get the Word-Building book, but get Bob's Bible: Words, Anagrams and Hooks and SCRABBLE Wordbook first!

Scrabble has been an integral part of our family for over 50 years. The originators (Grandmother and her sisters) were highly competitive and were totally against the idea of looking up words prior to playing. But, in order to encourage the game with the fourth generation, the rules have been relaxed.As a result, this book is extremely helpful to teach adding on to words and multiple-word plays. While it just consists of alphabetized lists, we make it a rule that you also have to look up the meaning of the word in the Scrabble dictionary, if not known.But beware... while the book is fairly complete, there are some words that are not included which can be found in earlier editions of the Official Scrabble Dictionary.So, the recommendation is, this makes a fun and wonderful companion book, but should not be relied on alone.

I use this book to occasionally jog my memory or generate an idea for an add-on word if I'm stuck. The pages are clearly laid out and well-organized. But purists complain some of the "definitive" lists are out-of-date and incomplete.

I am very disappointed in the Kindle version as one cannot search the book. To flip through the pages looking for a certain letter takes entirely too much time. I would much rather have the paper version.

I haven't used this myself, but have seen it. This book is based on the 2nd Edition of the OSPD (Official Scrabble Player's Dictionary). Many additions, corrections, and some deletions were made for the 3rd Edition of the OSPD (published in 1995-1996), and the 4th Edition came out in 2006 adding several THOUSAND more words... SO this book is worthless. Don't Buy it.

[Note: this review was originally written several years ago... Amazon won't let me change my star rating.. but I'd rate this book ZERO stars now]

If you ever want to be a good Scrabble player, study this book!

While a little dated (since words have been removed from legal play) it still is the most complete list for building words.

This is my second copy of this book, too many pages were falling out of the first one! I have also used others, but this one has the advantage of showing letters that you can put in front of words. I wish someone would do a new edition however.

If you ever wonder what you can put on the front or end of a word than this is the book for you. We love it. It comes in so handy when you have those odd letters.

this book is outdated by a factor of 2 (two) dictionary revisions. As many as 8000 words are not included, and to complete the pie, there's (ewwww!) TYPOS! Yep, errata, misprints, however you wanna call it. This book is essentially garbage.