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Word Poker Guide
Written by _L_B_2001
When you first start a round of Word Poker, you need to make a mental note of which vowels you have, especially if the letter e is available. Many words can be formed that end in vowel-consonant-e, for example if you see you have an a, t and e, you may be able to form groups of similar words such as hate, late, rate, fate etc.
Look out for possible word endings such as er, ed, ing or s which can boost your score- (eg. skate can become skated, skater, skates, skating etc.) - if you have these letters available use them at every opportunity.
Also look out for other common vowel combinations such as oa (coat, boat...) ea (heat, beat...) ou, ai, ee and oo. There may also be useful consonant combinations such as sh, ch, ck etc.
After entering the more obvious words, it can be a good idea to look for consonants which can be paired together. Most consonants don't go well together; for example you will rarely find words containing the letter pairs bd, gd or gp because they
are difficult to pronounce. However, some letters such as R, S and L can be paired with other consonants - as in crate, trail, stack and block. Some existing words can be modified by adding a second consonant, for example Bake can become Brake, Low can become Flow or Slow, Bow can become Brow or Blow etc.
If you get stuck for words, try re-arranging some that you've already found to make new ones. For example, from the words
pans you can also make pan, nap, naps, snap and span.
Try and enter words in a logical order, so that you don't forget which words you have and haven't used. So, if you have for
example A, E, T, G, L, D in your letters, you might want to start with words ending in ate (late, gate, date) then go onto words
ending in ale, then perhaps try words with ea in the middle; all the time remembering to add endings like ed wherever possible.
Unless you're looking for 3 Letter Words or a Full House you should probably leave 'basic' words such as cot, bat and hit
until the end, as these short words will earn you far fewer points (unless you have an s to make them
plural).
When deciding which section to place your score in at the end of a round, it isn't always a good idea to submit your highest
score. For example, it's usually much easier to get a high score in 4 Letter Words (LW) than in 5LW. So, say you got 120 in
4LW but 64 in 5LW, you'd submit the score of 64, because you know its going to be easy to score high in the 4LW category in coming rounds but much harder to get a decent 5LW score again. Also, try to avoid leaving the Full House category empty until the last round in case you get naff letters and can't score anything.
Umm sorry if this has been a bit long winded but hope it helps!!!
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