Are you ‘mabobing’? Read Lucy Mangan’s new article to find out.

I am mabobing as I type this, according to CorrinFoley – making random, fidgety movements (banging my foot against the chair, rapping my fingers on the keys between sentences). It’s because I have so many decisions to make in this column, the first of course being whether to… Read More

Are you ‘kwl’ or ‘cool’? Lucy Mangan looks at your word submissions from the last fortnight

News reaches me – via contributor kaiwaiipanda – that if you are under a certain age, you do not write “cool” in your texts. It is apparently only cool to write “kwl”. I m old, fthr tm. It is possible that they have sound reasons for this otherwise inexcusable… Read More

What happens at a Scrabble Tournament?

Mark Nyman, author of Scrabble Secrets, heads to Dunmurry to take on the Northern Ireland Scrabble Championship and gives us a snapshot of what it’s like to play tournament Scrabble. After quite an eventful journey to get to Ireland (one missed flight included), I just made it to the… Read More

Tips for learning Scrabble words

There are over 120,000 two to eight letter words in the Collins Scrabble word list and very few Scrabble enthusiasts have the time or the will to try and learn them all. Most players focus on the types of words that are going to be most useful, and those… Read More

‘Drynuary’ is nearly over, so what’s next on the word list? Here’s Lucy Mangan with your update…

How are you? Have you survived Dry January? Or ‘Drynuary’, as submitted by Tommy, which if we’d thought of it earlier could have saved us all vital nanoseconds over the last four weeks. When you consider how boring all conversations about dry January are, a nanosecond saved on such discussion… Read More

New Year Etymology Corner – we take a look at the word of the moment, ‘resolution’

‘Resolution’ is one of a group of nouns that come from the Latin word solūtus (meaning ‘made loose’) and are all related to verbs ending in ‘-solve’ (from the Latin solvō, meaning ‘I release’). Other members of this group are ‘dissolution/dissolve’ and ‘absolution/absolve’. They all suggest some sort of release… Read More

Gloving, Basic Income, and Lemmium: December’s Words in the News

As we settle back into our routines with fresh faces and Christmas behind us, we’re bringing some great neologisms into 2016 that December gifted to our linguistic stockings. The adjective nonbinary isn’t exactly new, even when referring to gender (where it indicates a person who identifies as neither female nor… Read More

Lucy Mangan looks at your first word submissions of 2016

Happy New Year to you all! I trust you all had a lovely break and are now enjoying unparalleled success with your chosen resolutions. I am not. But in a crazy twist no one saw coming, I have conceived another one which renders any guilt or fretting about this impossible. Read More

Winning words to help you play like a Scrabble champ this Christmas

It’s Christmas, you are mid Scrabble game, the tension is high, you’ve eaten a whole box of mince pies, Only Fools and Horses is on again, and your rack is offering up no distinguishable word options. Fear not, Craig Beevers, the World Scrabble Champion reveals his top words to save… Read More