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The NASPA List of NWL2023 Anamonics

This list is maintained by NASPA and was last revised 2025-06-16 17:41:47. If you like it, please take the time to compose a few anamonics yourself and e-mail them to info@scrabbleplayers.org. Check the lists of highest-frequency six-letter and seven-letter stems that still need anamonics, if you need inspiration.

Contents

• 0. Introduction
• 1. Three-letter NWL2023 stems
• 2. Six-letter NWL2023 stems
• 3. Seven-letter NWL2023 stems
• 4. Eight-letter NWL2023 stems

0. Introduction

In Scrabble jargon, a `hook' is a letter that can be added to a word to form another word. (`S' is a hook for `HOOK' because `SHOOK' is a word.) An `anahook' is a letter that can be added to a word (or more generally any set of letters) to make an anagram of a word. (`W' is an anahook for `RETAINS' because `TINWARES' is a word.) A set of letters that has a useful set of anahooks is often called a `stem'.

An anamonic is a mnemonic phrase made up of the anahooks for a particular stem. If we can remember the phrase `RELAXING BY HIS CELL DOOR' for the stem `INMATE', we will never waste time trying to find a seven-letter word in `AEIMNTU' (`INMATE'+`U'), because there are no `U's in that phrase. On the other hand, if we have `AEIMNT?' on our rack and the only possible hook on the board is a `C', we will know that it is worth thinking a bit to find `NEMATIC'.

In the lists that follow, stems are listed in anagram-alphabetical order, and stems that are not acceptable words are marked with a `*'. You can change the order by clicking on the table headings. Stems that are words that are acceptable only in CSW are marked with a `#'. Sometimes, when a stem has no vowel anahooks, one needs to add vowels to the list of anahooks to make a pronounceable mnemonic. Mnemonics where vowels are to be ignored are marked with a `*'. Mnemonics where consonants are to be ignored are marked with a '@'.

The usefulness of an anamonic depends on how often the stem is likely to be seen and how many words can be made from the stem. To help you tell how probable a stem is, each line begins with a number that will be lower, the more probable that stem is. (To be precise, if a line starts with `n', then there is a 1/n chance of drawing tiles that can be used to spell the stem when drawing the number of tiles that there are in the stem, from a standard tile bag, as calculated by wordprob.c.)

Where known, the author(s) and earliest known publication date is shown.

In order to facilitate sharing this list with a wider audience, we are starting to assign ratings to anamonics. In terms of MPAA ratings, 0=unrated, 1=G, 2=PG, 3=R, 4=X.

In the early 1990s, Nick Ballard organized the first drive to coin anamonics for drive to coin anamonics for high-probability stems, publishing collections of them in his journal Medleys and elsewhere. John Chew collected and published anamonics online for a decade starting in the late 1990s; his collection was transferred to NASPA in 2025.

1. Three-letter NWL2023 stems

2. Six-letter NWL2023 stems

3. Seven-letter NWL2023 stems

4. Eight-letter NWL2023 stems