Scrabble Shop (possibly the first or last in a series)

Just like music, what started as an activity became an obsession.

When I first started playing Scrabble online, I set the racks to display vowels first, consonants second. As a newb this seemed more logical and easier to process than the "alphagram" (alphabetical) order that is more common among tournament players and study materials. Pretty soon I found that a vowel-centered approach also helped me organize and remember words more effectively, so nowadays the vowels are my "stems" and I make comprehensive lists based on them. Above is the second of three cards containing A+I+I and five consonants. Below in rack order:

I found full rote memorization just took too long considering the number of words, so now I make a pass at decoding the rack orders once a day for two or three days in a row. This has greatly accelerated the pace with only a small sacrifice in long-term retention.

Studying this way means setting one's sights high, indeed quite a bit higher than anything I've been able to accomplish in a rated tournament. In this system, MINYANIM takes equal priority to INCASING, which is rather illogical considering one is far less likely than the other to present itself in an actual game. Even some top players don't bother with the very most unlikely words for this reason and are no worse for wear. I have allowed my word knowledge to outpace my strategy rather absurdly at this point, a bit like a soulless technician with no musicality. As Mumford would have it, perhaps owing to the sea of subjectivity that artists are set adrift in, I find it therapeutic to play the technical busy-beaver in my "spare" time, even if the circuitous path I'm taking toward lexical completism has not necessarily bore fruit in tournament play just yet.