Letter preference

[bobbi]

For some unknown reason, I find that if there's a 'P' in the word (and even more strongly if 'P' is the "big letter",) I'm able to find more words more easily, and get close to the desired target (I don't like words in italics - messes with acceptable Scrabble norms, so best is my goal,) with little effort.

Why on earth would that be?

I'm aware that there are a lot of anagram patterns using words with most common letters (in order: ETAISONHR...) plus P. E.g. plate/petal/pleat; panel/penal/plane; pinto/piton/point etc.

But even so , I've always thought that this is an anomaly - especially as 'P" is not high on the list of poplular letters. My second most succesful letter is L.

Anybody have similar observances or preferences - not necessarily with P?

[Alan W]

You've raised an intriguing issue, bobbi.

In my own playing, I haven't noticed any letter bias, though there are certain words that I seem to have a blind spot for. (E.g "tsar", and in general, any word constructed in a way that's unusual for English words).

I'd like to delve into the game statistics and see if I can spot any interesting patterns in the words that are most often found, and those that are most often missed. If I come up with anything, I'll post the details here.

In the meantime, it would be interesting to hear from any other players with similar experiences.