TLW66 - Nomads Results

Paul OaMar117 Pasaingham Avonuo(Any opinions expressed by ABSP Committee members are made in a personal capacity and donot represent the views of We Committee unless otherwise stated.)Last time round I asked for more pros and cons on the great SOWPODS debate which, onewouldsuspect is nearing a conclusion if we are to adopt a combined list from next January, or stickwith 0SW4 without OSPD words. To start with, our former editor chips In with a lot of theanswers to last time's questions...I noticed that there were some anti-Sowpods tetters in your last issue. In my opinion, theplayers who will benefit most are the beginners who have reached the stage of actually lookingfor bonuses.There is nothing more annoying than to have words disallowed which seem perfectly reasonable.Even an ex-NSC winner, Richard Sharp, who was familiar with paper sizes, was annoyed to haveSEXTO disallowed in postal Scrabble; the equivalent SIMTO is also missing.Nearly 140 7-letter words are listed as useful additions. Of these, 19 are in the Shorter Oxford; afurther 23 are In Hamlyn's. Of the remainder, some have hyphens removed like DOGEARS andSEAGIRT. Others are plurals of familiar words like AREOLAS and HERNIAE. In addition there are5 RE- words, 3 OUT- words and 2 UN- words. What new player hasnt tried words like JEEP,LEANERS, LOANERS, RELOANS, DIALERS, OUTSEEN or even NEGATOR? Computer users willwelcome READOUT.Sometimes players try words which sound reasonable. With AEEGNRT one might try "rentage",but though the word exists it hasnt reached Chambers' I remember Bob Violett tryingPARGETER successfully because he knew it was someone's name. It takes a player In theThailand final to come up with FATWAING!Finally, we can reclaim some of the words we were deprived of in 1995 - BOONIES, CHEEROS,GUANINS, GUIMPES, MORULAS, REDEYES, SEMILOG, SHAWING, SIDEWAY, SOLANDS,SORDINE, SPINAGE, SUPERED, THERMOS, TORULAS and UNDREST.Peter Dean, Peterborough, CambsI was disappointed to read the letters by Moya Dewar, Mary Jones, Peter Sime, JohnHowell, and Janet Braund on the subject of SOWPODS. They, like the letterspublished in the previous edition, reveal a deep misunderstanding of the problem.Moya and Mary "fail to understand your claim that the majority of ABSP membersvoted for [SOWPODS]". That, at least, is easy to deal with. The ABSP and PhilipNelkon, for Mattel, each conducted a survey, and in each the majority voted forSOWPODS. The ABSP survey also asked for rating information, and the results