LOGOLOG
a weblog of wordplay by Eric Harshbarger
Front Hook: H
It's difficult to follow the awesomeness of GREENGAGE, but my front hook entry for H is still pretty strong.
H is for Hexamine
Like the previous entry, this one is nice because the two words are different parts of speech. HEXAMINE is a chemical compound (a noun), while EXAMINE is a common verb. Altering the part of speech is definitely a plus to me in this "front hooking game"; it's an amplification of simply getting two unrelated words.
This example is also nice because I like how the longer word is rather unusual, and likely unknown to many. I can envision a great "gotcha" moment in a game of Scrabble whereby one player is extremely proud to have played the high-scoring EXAMINE, but suddenly the opponent counters with the wholly unexpected H-hook and scores on a great comeback play.
Readers of these entries have suggested that I listed some "honorable mentions" for each letter if I can think of any, so I will start to do so now (and might retroactively add some for the A-G articles). For the letter H here are a few more notable words:
- Hairline
- Hairbrush
- Hallow
- Harmful
- Horology
- Hessonite
- Hoverfly
-- Eric
[29 August 2014]
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