Beat: I suck at scrabble

[garcia1000]

So I was playing Scrabulous with some of my friends. Then I find myself thinking, "Is ZIN a word?"
Later I can't think of the bingo for TISANEC.

What should I do?!?

[___SK___]

caniest pops out right away.

look for common endings to words, in this case iest or ies.

[btmagnetw]

i'm not sure if CANIEST is good, but ACETINS 100% is.

ZIN is good. ZEN is not.

fyi, TISANE + almost every other letter makes a 7 letter bingo. its the best stem out there. only exceptions (from memory) are J Q and Y

[diebitter]

INCEST

A!

[garcia1000]

The answers are ACETINS and CINEAST. I used to know at least one bingo word for each of the major stems (TISANE, RETINA, TINERS, etc) and all the 3 letter words, but NOW I DO NOT AND I AM MAD

[Madman Madman]

lol

[gumpzilla]

The amount of memorization work that goes into being competitive at even the most basic levels of Scrabble seems very discouraging to me. It's kind of a turnoff for me. At least with chess I can largely ad lib (and stay away from openings where my lack of theoretical knowledge will kill me.)