WordFixx

There is a strange and cartoony clump of words centered around SQUISH, or the idea or sound of squishing things.  This includes SQUUSH, SQUSH, and SQUOOSH, and an Ngram view of these shows all kinds of ups and downs in the noise of word history ... The first of these to appear was SQUSH, around 1830, and it was used in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, chapter 29.  SQUUSH came about in 1850, peaked well below the others in 1970 and is headed down to obscurity these days, while SQUOOSH first gets a blip around 1880 and had a big upturn from 1950 to 2010, but it now sinking as, much to my surprise, SQUSH is taking off. Since these are all verbs, they have the full range of strange-looking endings which would be fun for a Scrabble night: SQUUSHED, SQUUSHES, SQUUSHING, SQUSHED, SQUSHES, SQUSHING, SQUOOSHED, SQUOOSHES, SQUOOSHING and can be turned into adjectives as SQUSHY, SQUUSHY and SQUOOSHY. OMG, it's never ending, there are comparative versions SQUSHIER, SQUUSHIER, SQUOOSHIER an

 Some very strange words came up in a session of Word Connect this weekend.  The letters brought up an old word from deep in my brain: KNURL.  If ever there was a word that sounded like an ancient Anglo-Saxon remnant, that would be it.  Hopping over to some dictionaries, I was surprised by how many variants there are, and then remembered that it is more well known with a G instead of a K, as in GNARLY. So, a KNURL is the same as a KNUR, which probably came from KNAR, and they all refer to the bumps on the trunk of a tree.  Not that any usage could be considered "modern", it also means that a smooth material has been specifically modified so we can get a better grip on it, so things like darts are KNURLED, or have been through the process of KNURLING.  As a verb, somewhere there is a machine or craftsman who can KNURL things. [EO] suggests it is probably derived from Middle English KNOR(-) meaning "knot", from about 1400 AD. Over on the G side, we have GNARL (verb) m

Here is a brief list of distinct currencies of Africa.  Note that Africa is historically complicated, being subjected to centuries of foreign imperialism.  CENTIMES and FRANCS were/are used in many African nations which were once French colonies.  LIRA in Italian areas, ESCUDOS in Portuguese areas, PESOS in Spanish areas.  And variations of DINARS closer to the Arab states. ANGOLAR- plural ANGOLARES- (Angola, 100 cents or 20 macutas) ARIARY- (Madagascar, 5 francs/iraimbilanja) BIRR (Ethiopia, 100 santim) BUTUT (Gambia) CAURI (Guinea) CEDI (Ghana, 100 pesewas) DALASI (Gambia, 4 shillings or 100 bututs) EKUELE var EKWELE- (Equatorial Guinea) IRAIMBILANJA (Madagascar), really, a search said it is valid in the Scrabble US/Canada dictionaries. KHOUM (Mauritania) KOBO (Nigeria) KWACHA (Malawi, 100 tambala; Zambia, 100 ngwee) KWANZA (Angola) LEONE (Sierra Leone, 100 cents) LILANGENI plural EMALANGENI (Swaziland, 100 cents) LOTI plural MALOTI (Lesotho, 100 lesente) MACUTA- (Angola) METICA plur

In a word unscrambler app last night, we ran into a set of letters where we had a strange mental block and could not see the obvious answer.  The letters were REMUPI, which is pretty funny to say.  Sometimes we just try goofy words because they are amusing.  Then we saw U-PRIME.  Still not a word, but PRIME is a good sub-puzzle.  PRIME, PRIM, PIE, PIER, RIM, RIME, RIP, REP ... it's good to do these in groups, then pick the next group to run through.  There's not much that could be done with the U though, certainly nothing came to mind about adding a U to PRIME in any sensible way.  EMU, RUMP, but it was still a dead end. After staring at it and shuffling letters and still not seeing anything, it turned out to be UMPIRE.  What's funny is how neither of us give a hoot about sports.  Maybe if we were big baseball fans we would have seen UMPIRE right away?  Oddly, the same app rejected UMP. Also, IMPURE, which was elusive because we're used to going through common start and

Following in the series of world monetary units, here is a word set for currency in Asia. Again, these vary widely through the decades in spelling and relations to other units, but there should be some basic usefulness for building vocabulary. AFGHANI (Afghanistan, 100 puls) ANNA (India, 12 pies) ATT (Laos) AVO (Macau) BAHT (Thailand, 100 satangs) CHHERTUM or CHETRUM (Bhutan) DIRAM (Tajikistan) DONG (Vietnam, 100 xu) HWAN (Korea, 100 won, 100 JIAO) JIAO (Korea) KIP (Laos, 100 atts) KOPECK or KOPEK (Russia, see ruble) KYAT (Myanmar, 100 pyas) LAARI (Maldives) MOHAR- (Nepal, until 1932, 128 dams) MONGO (Mongolia) NGULTRUM (Bhutan, 100 chhertum) PAISA plural PAISE, a.k.a. PICE plural PICE (India) PATACA (Macau, 100 avos) PIASTER or PIASTRE (French Indochina, 100 cent) PUL (Afghanistan) PYA (Myanmar) RENMINBI (China, a term for Chinese money in general, not a specific denomination) RIEL (Cambodia) RUBLE (Tajikistan, 100 tanga) RUFIYAA (Maldives, 100 laari) RUPEE (India, 100 paisa) and many

Almost every country in the world has its own currency, both a small unit (penny) and large unit (dollar), so with close to 200 nations and a whole history, there are tons of words here to add to a vocabulary.  Most people have likely heard of the most common units, like Japanese YEN, Mexican PESO, British POUND, and the EURO which replaced most European currencies around the year 2000.  Here are some others to look for in your word challenges.  The exact conversions and even the spellings vary across the decades.  All of these are in the Scrabble dictionary unless marked with a (-) and all have a plural which adds an "s" unless the plural is specifically given. Here are the currencies used in Europe in the last century or so. AUKSINAS- (Lithuania) BAN plural BANI (Romania) CENTAS or CENTAI or CENTU (Lithuania) CENTESIMO plural CENTESIMI (Italy) CENTIMOS (Spain & others) DRACHMA plural DRACHMAE or DRACHMAS (Greece, 100 lepta) DRAM (Armenia, 100 LUMA) ESCUDO (Portugal, 100