Spelling Bee

[Jacki]

Question to all - do you think you have to be a good speller to be good at Chihuahua? Interested in your thoughts. I think you have to be a good reader, and it helps to be good at spelling particularly in the Challenge game where you're percentage is on show.

[Valerie]

Hi Jacki
I love words and, fortunately, have always been good at spelling.  Perhaps because my mother drummed it into me from the age of four.  My partner, on the other hand, is utterly hopeless;  putting double letters when there's only one or vice versa.  I despair.  Therefore, I do think that being a good speller does help me when playing Chi.  And scrabble too at which I'm a particularly aggressive player.
Val

[Jacki]

I love scrabble - my husband and I play regularly and also to the death. He is a bad speller - he doesn't and didn't read. But he is crafty and I actually love it if he's ahead of me because it keeps his interest going! And yes he does beat me. Do you know your highest score?

[Jacki]

Just realised my first post said "you're" when it should have read "your percentage". OMG - not very good spelling or grammar! Quite ironic.

[pat]

My percentage hit rate isn't affected by my ability to spell - spelling is one of the few things that I'm fairly good at  . It drops because I'm too erratic a typist on the computer keyboard, and when I'm playing on a tablet without using the keyboard I often submit a word without realizing that one of the letters hasn't been sent to the rack. It also drops due to trying re- words, or words that end in -er that aren't permitted. Fortunately my percentage hit rate doesn't bother me at all so it's not a problem.

[mkenuk]

Spelling obviously is important in Chi, as it is in any word game, but, to me, being able to produce all forms of the word is every bit as important.
Take as an example the recent dispatched 10-letter game.
237 (from 301) played the word ditch, but only 216 played the past tense form ditched and only 126 played ditches.
patch and patched both had 254 hits, but the plural patches had only 133.
pitch, pitched and pitches had similar scores - 249, 250 and 135 respectively.

Is it possible that some players don't realise that plural forms with -es are allowed in Chi?

[TRex]

Just realised my first post said "you're" when it should have read "your percentage". OMG - not very good spelling or grammar! Quite ironic.

That's what the edit function is for! 

[a non-amos]

My response is a qualified yes and no.

Spelling is important, but misssspelling can also be important.

Every now and then I misssspell a word and Chi accepts the alternate spelling.  I click on it, and learn that the alternate sssspelling is a completely different word with a meaning far removed from the original target word.  Long sssstory made short, I have learned a new word.