GILNOOSY

Word of the Week

A feature wherein TileHead highlights a word that is is especially interesting or unusual (and, incidentally, useful in Scrabble play):

GILNOOSY

(unscramble the letters to form this week's word...)

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This week's word is...

SINOLOGY n. pl. -GIES

• Definition: the study of China or the Chinese; the study of Chinese culture, history, language, or literature (sometimes capitalized)

• Front hooks: (none)
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• Anagrams: (none)
• Longer extensions: (none)
• Wraparounds: (none)
• Other Spellings: (none)
• Related Forms: SINOLOGUE (n. a student or specialist in sinology), SINOLOGICAL (adj. of or pertaining to sinology)

TileHead says:

The sino- root (meaning "China" or "Chinese") arrived in English after a long journey through other languages and cultures: from the Late Latin Sinae we can trace it back to the Greek Sinai and then to the Arabic Sin, which probably formed it after the Chinese Ch'in (or Qi'n), the name of the fourth dynasty in China (c. 221-207 BC), during which the country was politically united and powerful.

Attention to sinological matters is on the rise, given China's increasingly important role on the world stage, though the academic discipline is now usually called simply "China Studies."

To understand what role China will, can and must play in shaping the world order, we need to understand China more deeply and engage China more frankly at all levels. I believe that it is time for a new sinology.
– Kevin Rudd, article in the Wall Street Journal (April 2010)

Although Chinese and Western comparatists know that modern Chinese literature is an integral part of world literature, its study has been confined mainly to sinological circles.
– Wang Ning, article in Modern Language Quarterly (March 2008)

 Speaking of sinological matters, February 3rd marks the New Year in the Chinese LUNISOLAR calendar system.  It will be the year of the Rabbit in the Chinese zodiac.

"Know yourself"

In Other Words...
 A feature wherein TileHead presents a quote that is interesting, informative, inspiring, or humorous:

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
– Sun Tzu, Art of War (c. 500 BC)

AHLMOOPS

Word of the Week

A feature wherein TileHead highlights a word that is is especially interesting or unusual (and, incidentally, useful in Scrabble play):

AHLMOOPS

(unscramble the letters to form this week's word...)

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This week's word is...

OMPHALOS n. (pl. OMPHALI)

• Definition: a central point; the heart or hub of a place, organization, or activity

• Front hooks: (none)
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• Anagrams: (none)
• Longer extensions: -KEPSES, -KEPSIS
• Wraparounds: (none)
• Other Spellings: (none)
• Related Forms: OMPHALI (plural of OMPHALOS)

TileHead says:

• The original omphalos (a Greek word meaning "navel") was a round stone in the temple of Apollo at Delphi, believed to mark the center of the earth.  By extension, it came to mean the central point of any place or activity, especially one having spiritual or mystical qualities.
  

  I downed the libation like honey and water. An hour and a half later I was two sheets to the wind and getting cocky. Here I was, embosomed in the very nave, the very omphalos of furtive femininity — a prize patron of the women's restaurant, a member, privy to its innermost secrets.
  – T.C. Boyle, Descent of Man: Stories (1979)

• By further extension, we arrive at OMPHALOSKEPSIS, a word combining omphalos and the Greek skepsis ("examination").  It therefore means "contemplation of the navel or center of something," or "navel-gazing."  This can be used to refer to certain forms of meditation, though it is also often used mockingly or humorously:
  

  Presumably, one arrives at game theory through omphaloskepsis.
  -- Verbatim magazine (Summer 1983)
  
  Mostly absorbed in the time-honored pursuits of adolescents in any era — school, social life, the opposite sex, omphaloskepsis — we grew up blessed, as we thought then, to be living in the greatest country on earth, where we were free to develop ourselves as far as we could imagine.
  - Phil Lesh, Searching for the Sound: My Life with the Grateful Dead (2005)

"Cool under fire"

In Other Words...
 A feature wherein TileHead presents a quote that is interesting, informative, inspiring, or humorous:

In every discipline, the ability to be clearheaded, present, cool under fire is much of what separates the best from the mediocre.
– Josh Waitzkin (world class chess player and champion Tai Chi Chuan Push Hands martial artist), in his book Art of Learning (2007)

CELLNTUU

Word of the Week

A feature wherein TileHead highlights a word that is is especially interesting or unusual (and, incidentally, useful in Scrabble play):

CELLNTUU

(unscramble the letters to form this week's word...)

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This week's word is...

LUCULENT adj.

• Definition: clear and convincing; lucid

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• Anagrams: (none)
• Longer extensions: -LY
• Wraparounds: (none)
• Other Spellings: (none)
• Related Forms: LUCULENTLY (adv.)

TileHead says:

• Stemming from the Latin lux ("light"), luculent once meant "full of light, bright, shining," but now it is nearly always used to mean clear and convincing, such as "a luculent argument" or "luculent observations."

• The lux root shines on many English words, including the following:
• ELUCIDATE (to make clear, to explain), ELUCIDATOR, ELUCIDATIVE
• LUX (a unit of illumination), MICROLUX, MILLILUX
• LUCID (easily understood) LUCIDLY, LUCIDITY, LUCIDNESS
• LUCENT (giving off light), LUCENTLY
• LUCENCE (the quality of giving off light), LUCENCY
• LUCIFER (a friction match)
• LUCIFERIN (an organic substance that that upon oxidation produces a heatless light, such as in the firefly or glowworm)
• LUCIFERASE (an enzyme that catalyzes the oxidation of luciferin)\
• LUCIFEROUS (bringing or conveying light or insight)
• NOCTILUCA (a marine-dwelling luminescent microorganism)
• RADIOLUCENT (transparent to X-rays), RADIOLUCENCY
• PELLUCID (allowing light to pass through; translucent, transparent), PELLUCIDLY
• TRANSLUCENT (allowing light to pass through; transparent), TRANSLUCENCE, TRANSLUCENCY, TRANSLUCENTLY, SEMITRANSLUCENT

And a couple of my favorites:

• RELUCENT: (adj.) reflecting light; gleaming; radiant; resplendent
• "The more successful a clan-leader was, the more his palace would have glittered – storerooms and tombs would have been stacked with relucent treasure."
  – Bettany Hughes, Helen of Troy: The Story Behind the Most Beautiful Woman in the World (2007)
  

• LUCUBRATE and ELUCUBRATE: (v.) to produce by laborious study, especially during the night by artificial light or candlelight, i.e. to "burn the midnight oil"
  and
  LUCUBRATION and ELUCUBRATION: (n.) nocturnal study or meditation; the act or process of lucubrating; sometimes, study in general
• "I feel assured, that if Plato himself were to return and renew his sublime lucubrations in the metropolis of Great Britain, a handicraftsman... would be thought far the more respectable."
  – Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Blessed Are Ye That Sow Beside All Waters! (1817)
• "Afternoons were generally reserved for Shakespeare and Roman historians, though masters of every kind passed across his desk, including Confucius. When he didn't have company, he would often lucubrate until early morning at his desk..."
  – Frederick Brown, Flaubert: A Biography (2007)

"Light of the mind"

In Other Words...
 A feature wherein TileHead presents a quote that is interesting, informative, inspiring, or humorous:

 Language is the light of the mind.
– John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

AAILMNT

Word of the Week

A feature wherein TileHead highlights a word that is is especially interesting or unusual (and, incidentally, useful in Scrabble play):

AAILMNT

(unscramble the letters to form this week's word...)

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This week's word is...

MATINAL adj.

• Definition: of or pertaining to the morning; of or relating to animals or insects active in the early morning

• Front hooks: (none)
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• Anagrams: (none)
• Longer extensions: (none)
• Wraparounds: (none)
• Other Spellings: (none)
• Related Forms: MATUTINAL (adj.), MATUTINALLY (adv.)

TileHead says:

• Matuta was the Roman goddess of childbirth and of the dawn, whence came the Latin matutinum meaning morning.  Thus, dear Matuta is the ultimate source not only of MATINAL and MATUTINAL, but also MATIN / MATTIN (a morning prayer or a morning song) and the familiar word MATINEE (a daytime performance), all of which passed into English from French.

"A word... Begins to live"

In Other Words...
 A feature wherein TileHead presents a quote that is interesting, informative, inspiring, or humorous:

A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.
– Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Top 10 Scrabble Developments of the Past 10 Years

The competitive Scrabble scene was influenced heavily by computer technology and the internet in the 2000's, but significant developments also occurred in the publishing and organizational arenas.  All in all, it was mostly a decade of achievement and progress, though not entirely without difficulty or controversy, due in large part to the following developments:

Top 10 Scrabble Developments of the Past 10 Years

• The Internet Scrabble Club (ISC) appears on the 'net (c. 2001).  Based out of Romania and eschewing advertising, it eludes the usual legal issues associated with using the S-word.  With a simple and straightforward interface, it still remains the best place online for real-time Scrabble play with strong opposition from around the world. 
• Stefan Fatsis writes Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players (2001).  Well-written and deftly mixing history and anecdota, it introduced many future players to the ins and outs of club and tournament Scrabble.  Two documentaries, Scott Peterson's Scrabylon (2003) and Erik Chaikin and Julian Petrillo's Word Wars (2004), later cover most of the same territory in the visual medium.
• The first Causeway Scrabble Challenge is organized by Michael Tang (2002).  Today Causeway, an international event using the Collins word list, is arguably the premier Scrabble tournament in the world in terms of level of competition and prize money.
• The first School Scrabble Championship takes place in Boston, MA (2003), building on the success of the School Scrabble program begun by the NSA in the early 1990s.  The annual tournament for 5th-8th graders now offers a $10,000 top prize and considerable media exposure.  The annual World Youth Scrabble Championship (WYSC) debuts three years later (2006), providing a high-profile stage for international players under 18 years of age.
• The World English-language Scrabble Players Association (WESPA) is formed "to promote global recognition and respect of Scrabble as a serious competitive activity" (2003). Today more than 20 national associations are affiliated with WESPA, and thousands of players compete internationally under its auspices.
• Zyzzyva, Michael Thelen's word study and judging program, is released (2004).  Although certainly not the first such program (Lexpert and others were released in the 1990s), Zyzzyva has become the gold standard for word adjudication at tournaments and a frequent study partner for legions of competitive players.
• Seth Lipkin and Keith Smith develop the website cross-tables.com (2005).  Aptly subtitled "your guide to competitive Scrabble," cross-tables is now the "go-to" site for North American tournament listings, player results and ratings, and much more.  
• Jason Katz-Brown and John O'Laughlin release Quackle, a software application for high-level Scrabble play and analysis (2005). The program proves to be better than earlier engines (Maven, etc.) and quickly becomes a mainstay of the competitive player's arsenal.
• Scrabble comes to the popular social media site Facebook. The Scrabulous application is first on the scene (2007), but its developers (Jayant and Rajat Agarwalla) eventually cave in to legal pressure from Hasbro and Mattel.  (It resurfaces later as an altered version of the game called Lexulous.) Hasbro eventually releases a Scrabble Beta app (for North America) and Mattel releases a Scrabble Worldwide app (for the rest of the world). By 2010, both applications boast hundreds of thousands of users.
• Hasbro announces that it will no longer fund competitive Scrabble (2008), setting in motion a period of administrative and political turmoil. As part of the change, the Hasbro-funded National Scrabble Association (NSA) turns its attention to school and casual play. Meanwhile, the North American Scrabble Players Association (NASPA), led by Chris Cree and John Chew, is formed and soon assumes primary management of club and tournament Scrabble in Canada and the U.S. (2009). A small minority of players, who disagree with the direction and philosophies of NASPA, form the Word Game Game Players Organization (WGPO) in 2010. Nonetheless, NASPA membership surpasses 3,000 in 2010 and the vast majority of competitive clubs and tournaments remain under its auspices.

Notable Mention

A few developments that just missed the cut included a host of important publications and a few other notable achievements:

• The publication of Tony J. Rasch's Brow-Raisers (2001)
• The web debut of David and Oliver Johnson's JumbleTime (c. 2002)
• The publication of Robert Gillis's Bob's Bible (2002)
• The first edition of Keith Smith's Total Scrabble (2003)
• The Long List (LL) is compiled by the NSA's Dictionary Committee, chaired by Jim Pate, creating an official source in North America for root words of 10-15 letters in length (2003); the Dictionary Committee also updates the OSPD/TWL in 2006
• ESPN begins broadcasting Scrabble, first covering the All-Stars tournament (2003) and then the Nationals in New Orleans (2004)
• The publication of Mike Baron's Complete Wordbook for Game Players (2004)
• The first Players Championship is organized by Chris Cree and others, in response to lack of funding from Hasbro for a National tournament that year (2007) 
• The publication of Paul McCarthy's Letterati: An Unauthorized Look at Scrabble and the People Who Play It (2008) 
• Cornelia Guest begins publishing The Last Word, an independent online Scrabble newsletter (2009)
• Joe Edley publishes a number of books, including the 2nd (2001) and 3rd (2009) editions of Everything Scrabble (with John Williams) and a series of Scrabble Puzzles books (2008)
• The publication of Joel Wapnick's How to Play Scrabble Like a Champion (2010), a much-revised version of his 1986 book Champion's Strategy for Winning at Scrabble Brand Crossword Game

And there were, of course, many important developments that missed the cut merely because they occurred in the previous decade:

• The first World Championship takes place in London, featuring the new SOWPODS word list (a combination of the North American and British lists) (1991)
• The NSA begins the School Scrabble program (1991)
• Two important tournament pairing software packages, John Chew's tsh and Jeff Widergren's Tourneyman, debut (c. 1992)
• Joe Edley and John Williams publish the 1st edition of Everything Scrabble (1994)
• The expurgation controversy erupts, eventually leading to the publication of the (expurgated) OSPD3 and the first (definition-less) TWL (c. 1994-1996)
• Sherrie Saint John's Crossword Games Pro (CGP) mailing list debuts (1994)
• John Chew creates NSA's first website (1998)
• Carol & M.G. Ravichandran's Lexpert program is first released (c. 1999)
• Cheryl Cadieux's OSPD mailing list debuts (1999)
• Joe Edley wins an unprecedented third National title (2000)
• The SOWPODS referendum takes place, with NSA members rejecting a change to the international word source (2000)

No doubt the next 10 years will bring another series of impressive developments, publications, and achievements.  Here's to the next decade of competitive Scrabble!

ADEHLNS (2)

Word of the Week:

A feature wherein TileHead highlights a word that is is especially interesting or unusual (and, incidentally, useful in Scrabble play):

ADEHLNS (2)

(unscramble the letters to form this week's word...)

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This week's word is...

HANDSEL v. -SELED, -SELING, SELS, or -SELLED, -SELLING, -SELS

• Definition:
  1. (n.) a gift to express good wishes or good luck, especially at the beginning of a new year
  2. (n.) a first installment or payment: earnest money
  3. (v.) to inaugurate with a token or gesture of goodwill or good luck
  4. (v.) to use or do for the first time

• Front hooks: (none)
• Back hooks: -S
• Anagrams: HANDLES (inflected form of HANDLE v. -DLED, -DLING, -DLES)
• Longer extensions: -ED, -ING, -LED, -LING
• Wraparounds: (none)
• Other Spellings: HANSEL (v. -SELED, -SELING, -SELS or -SELLED, -SELLING, -SELS)
• Related Forms: (none)

TileHead says:

• The Old English hanselen meant "delivery into the hands of another." Similarly, the Old Norse handsal meant "giving of the hand, or shaking hands on a bargain or promise," and the Old Swedish handsal meant "money handed over to someone, i.e. a gratuity or tip."  Similar words exist in other languages as well.  The English word handsel (or hansel) nearly always signifies a specific kind of gift or offer, one associated with a new year or any new enterprise.

• Handsel Monday, the first Monday of the new year on which handsels were traditionally given to children and servants, is an old secular holiday that is still celebrated in parts of Scotland and northern England.  Happy Handsel Monday!

"Last year's words"

In Other Words...

Last season's fruit is eaten
And the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail.
For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
– T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), in the poem "Little Gidding" (1943)