Mathew Browne

Having good luck and a decent vocabulary might be enough to win you a game of Scrabble, but what if you’re against a particularly formidable opponent, or a relative you really don’t like and would like to wipe the floor with? Fortune and anagrammatical skills will only get you so far; here are my top three tips for really sticking it to your opponent.

#3 - Use a word that looks mis-spelt

Here’s a short list of perfectly valid Scrabble words, but which your opponent will presume you’ve spelt incorrectly. They, of course, will challenge you and reach for the Scrabble dictionary. You, on the other hand, will sit back smugly, knowing that you’ve just earnt yourself an extra turn. Of course, try this trick more than once and your opponent will call your bluff and allow all of your weird words through, unchallenged. This, in turn, will give you the chance to use bogus words like cromulent, embiggens and kwyjibo.

There are piles of words in the Scrabble dictionary that fit the description; these are just a few examples.

AMUCK APATITE ASBESTUS ASPERATE COALA CHICKORY CIGARET CUNDUM CUTLAS CYDER DORNOCK DROWND FANTOM GALIVANT GOODBY GREWSOME JALOPY KREEP KULTUR KUMQUAT MUSTACHE PEEPUL PENCEL PENSIL RABBET SKEEING SYCOSIS

#2 - “Q” words without the “U”

So you’ve picked up the dreaded Q tile, but no matter how many tiles you get rid of, you just can’t pick up the U. It doesn’t have to be the end of the world, there are plenty of words you can use without a U following the Q. Just don’t expect me to tell you what these words mean.

• 2-letter Words - QI
• 3-letter Words - QAT QIS SUQ
• 4-letter Words - QADI QAID QATS QOPH SUQS WAQF
• 5-letter Words - BURQA FAQIR NIQAB QADIS QAIDS QIBLA QOPHS QORMA TALAQ TRANQ UMIAQ WAQFS
• 6-letter Words - BURQAS BUQSHA FAQIRS NIQABS QABALA QANATS QASIDA QAWWAL QIBLAS QIGONG QINDAR QINTAR QIVIUT QORMAS QWERTY SHEQEL TALAQS TRANQS UMIAQS YAQONA
• 7-letter Words - BUQSHAS INQILAB QABALAH QABALAS QASIDAS QAWWALI QAWWALS QIGONGS QINDARS QINTARS QIVIUTS QWERTYS SHEQELS TSADDIQ TZADDIQ YAQONAS
• 8-Letter Words - INQILABS MBAQANGA MUQADDAM QABALAHS QAIMAQAM QALAMDAN QAWWALIS QINDARKA QWERTIES SHEQALIM TSADDIQS TZADDIQS
• 9-letter Words - MBAQANGAS MUQADDAMS QABALISM QABALIST QAIMAQAMS QALAMDANS QINGHAOSU TSADDIQIM TZADDIQIM

#1 - Know all of those annoying 2-letter words

What’s better than annoying the hell of of your opponent by using a series of words like xu, zo and aa? Knowing what they mean, too. Trust me, it drives people crazy. Here’s a list of the two-letter words which either appear in the American or International English versions of the Scrabble dictionary. You can check here.

• AA - rough jagged lava found in Hawaiian volcanos
• AB - an abdominal muscle
• AD - short form of advertisement
• AE - one (Scots.)
• AG - agriculture
• AH - (verb) to say “Ah” for joy etc
• AI - a three-toed South American sloth
• AL - an East Indian tree
• AM - a present tense of the verb be -
• AN - a form of the indefinite article
• AR - the letter “R”
• AS - to that extent
• AT - in the position of
• AW - exclamation of disappointment
• AX - (verb) to work on with an axe
• AY - an affirmative vote (also AYE)
• BA - the eternal spirit in Egyptian mythology
• BE - (verb) to exist
• BI - a bisexual person
• BO - Amer. slang for friend
• BY - near; a side issue (pl. BYS)
• CH - English dial. for I
• DA - a Burmese heavy knife
• DE - preposition meaning of or from, in names
• DI - a plural of deus (a god)
• DO - (verb) to achieve; a celebration (pl. DOS)
• EA - a river (dial.)
• ED - education
• EE - Scots. dial. for eye (pl. EEN)
• EF - the letter “F”
• EH - (verb) to say “Eh” for surprise etc
• EL - an elevated railway
• EM - a printer’s measure
• EN - a printer’s measure, half of an EM
• ER - an expression of hesitation
• ES - the letter “S”
• ET - a past tense of eat
• EX - the letter “X”
• FA - a musical note
• FE - a Hebrew letter
• FY - an interj. expressing disgust (also FIE)
• GI - a judo or karate costume
• GO - (verb) to depart; a Japanese board game (pl. GOS)
• GU - a simple violin used in Shetland (also GJU, GUE)
• HA - an exclamation of surprise
• HE - a male
• HI - an exclamation of greeting
• HM - interj. expressing thoughtful consideration
• HO - interj. calling attention
• ID - part of the psyche
• IF - a condition
• IN - (verb) to harvest
• IO - a cry of joy
• IS - a present tense of be
• IT - impersonal pronoun
• JA - yes
• JO - a sweetheart
• KA - (verb) to serve (also KAE)
• KI - the spirit of Japanese martial art, see QI
• KO - a Maori digging stick
• KY - cows (also KYE)
• LA - a musical note
• LI - a Chinese distance unit
• LO - look, behold
• MA - mother
• ME - a musical note (also MI)
• MI - same as ME, above
• MM - exclamation of satisfaction
• MO - a moment
• MU - a Greek letter
• MY - belonging to me
• NA - interjction of disbelief
• NE - arch. form of not
• NO - a no vote (pl. also NOES)
• NU - a Greek letter
• NY - (verb) to approach (pl. also NYS)
• OB - an objection
• OD - a mystic universal force
• OE - a grandchild in Scotland (also OY, OYE)
• OF - belonging to
• OH - (verb) to exclaim “Oh” for surprise
• OI - interj. calling attention
• OM - a syllable intoned as part of a mantra
• ON - to go on
• OO - wool (Scots.)
• OP - an abstract art style
• OR - the heraldic colour gold
• OS - a bone
• OU - a bloke
• OW - interj. expressing pain
• OX - a mammal with hooves
• OY - same as OE, above
• PA - father
• PE - a Hebrew letter (also PEH)
• PI - (verb) to jumble or disorder (pr.p. PIEING, PIING)
• PO - a chamber pot
• QI - a Chinese life force
• RE - a musical note
• SH - interj. requesting silence
• SI - a musical note
• SO - a musical note (also SOH)
• ST - an exclamation of impatience
• TA - thanks
• TE - a musical note
• TI - a small tree
• TO - as far as
• UG - (verb) to cause hatred
• UH - interj. expressing disbelief
• UM - interj. of hesitation
• UN - one
• UP - (verb) to increase
• UR - interj. expressing hesitation
• US - a third person pronoun
• UT - a musical note
• WE - a third person pronoun
• WO - a curse
• XI - a Greek letter
• XU - a Vietnamese coin (pl. XU)
• YA - you
• YE - you
• YO - a call for effort
• YU - precious jade
• ZA - contraction of “pizza”
• ZO - a Himalayan cross between a yak and a cow (also DZO, DSO, ZHO, DZHO)

Isabel, this one’s for you
A bunch of people I know meant to watch the BBC Panorama documentary about Scientology, but everyone either missed it or only caught 5 minutes of it. Fortunately it’s available on Google Video.

No comments will be published. This really isn’t the venue to be discussing the issues presented here; I’m just posting the video in a location that’s easy to find.

I was recently joking with Martin Bean (a friend, fellow web designer and founder of MCB Studios) about a couple of silly web design enquiries I’ve received over the past few days. Between us, we realised, we had quite a number of such stories and quotes to share with you, here are 10 of the best (or worst!) ones.

#10 - “I have an idea for a website which could by the next eBay and I need a web design partner…”

I got this email when I was young and naive, so I agreed to meet this guy to discuss his plan over coffee in Central London after work one evening. It turns out his idea of “the next eBay” was to clone eBay itself! Indeed, he had acquired a rip-off domain name and wanted an identically functioning website, to be delivered within 6 weeks, and to be within his budget which was £900. I made my excuses and walked out.

Meet the new eBay, same as the old eBay.

#9 - “I want you to use this photo. I want it to be in landscape, but changed so that the height is bigger than the width”

You may presume here that this is just a case of a client not knowing the term ‘portrait’, but you’d be wrong. It was a photo of the building which the client in question operates from; the client wanted this photo stretched vertically so the building looked “taller and more corporate”. Bizarre I know, but this might have worked were there not trees in the foreground which made the whole effort look completely ridiculous. I tried in vain to convince the client to remove it, but the response I received boiled down to “I’m paying you to do a job, so do it as I tell you”. Fair enough.

Then they got all offended when I removed my “Designed by…” credit from the bottom of their site.

#8 - “Black on white is boring. How about hot pink on lime green? And can we make the logo spin? And Ariel is boring, let’s use Comic Sans.”

Of course this is not an actual quote and yes, it is a mild exaggeration, but the proportion of web design clients who fail to grasp the basics of good, sensible design is staggering. Just because you can make an element on the page animated doesn’t mean you should. Just because you can use a kooky font doesn’t mean you should.

I don’t hold it against a client for not having good design sense - that is my job. However, it does irritate me when my advice is ignored completely. One school of thought is that they’re paying me to do a job so I should do it exactly as they specify. Another school of thought is that it is a good designer’s job to convince the client against stupid design decisions. I think I lie somewhere in the middle - I’ll always make a case againse their ill-advised design choice, but if they’re still insistent, why waste more of my time?

#7 - “Use these photos, I got them from Google Images”

A big problem I encountered recently was with a client who provided a number of images for me to use on his site. I didn’t realise this, but he’d lifted them all from other websites, having done searches on Google Images. A few weeks after launching the site I received an angry email from a professional photographer who was accusing me of stealing his images. Clearly he was in the right (the image in question was part of a series he was presenting via his website) so I forwarded to the client his request to remove them. Soon the truth came out: every single one of the client’s images had been lifted from other sites, and he refused to remove them. Thankfully I include a liability disclaimer in my web design contracts which indemnifies me from claims that supplied images are copyright protected. In other words: if he gets caught, he’s got to deal with it. Last I heard, the photographer has initiated a copyright infringement claim against him, all because the client is stubborn.

#6 - “It sucks.”

Constructive criticism is a good thing. “It sucks” doesn’t fit that description.

This is a conversation I had with a client. I had just emailed them a link to a demo of a web page I’d made for them. The underlying page structure was identical, but I’d modified the CSS to change some colours and alter the size of some H1 and H2 tags. Nothing that major.

Client: I don’t like it.

Me: OK… what about it don’t you like?

Client: I don’t like any of it. It doesn’t work for me.

Me: Is it the colours, or…?

Client: No it’s ALL of it. You need to change this all completely.

Me: I only changed the colour scheme and the size of the headings. It’s otherwise the same as the last version.

Client: (pause) Well, now I don’t like it, change it back.

The client then agreed to use the original version.

#5 - “Why is your quote so expensive? My nephew can do [a 5 page website] for £50″

If he’s so good, just get him to do it. Even if site looks like this:

It doesn’t matter what quality your site is so long as you have one, right?

The quote above represents the attitude of too many small businesses acquiring their first website. A significant proportion of my clients already have existing clients designed by the boss’ son / the boss’ nephew / the office junior / the work experience kid /the boss himself using Publisher. In time, they realise that good web design is best left to the professionals.

#4 - “I paid for my domain name by credit card. My credit card billing address is in Oxford. So why doesn’t my site come up in Google when I type in ‘Oxford’?”

My response, in a nutshell, was: because it’s a one page website which hasn’t been indexed by Google, and the content did not refer to Oxford once.

I didn’t bother responding to the follow-up email, which began “Thanks for your response. Just a few follow-up questions” then asked about two or three dozen questions - “why am I not #1 in Google“, “why won’t anyone link to me“, “how do I get to #1 in Google“, etc. I followed the link at the bottom of their website to find their existing designers, who boast proudly to be SEO experts. I advised that this is a question for them, not me. There’s plenty of free information out there about SEO too, I’m not going to waste my time explaining it when some comprehensive answers to those questions have been answered in forums and blog posts many times over.

#3 - “I want to be number one in Google for the term ‘consultant’. My budget is £200.”

I just had to write back to this guy. What kind of consultant is he anyway? Turns out he was a life coach operating in the South-East of England, and didn’t even have a site yet. I briefly explained that it is useless to target the generic term ‘consultant’, far better to go for something like ‘London life coach’, and that the whole effort was useless when there wasn’t even a site in the first place. His response? “If I’m only going to show up for ‘London life coach’ then the cost should decrease proportionally. £25 should be enough.” No, it won’t.

#2 - “Just one more small change…”

Though it seems trivial to “change everything from red to orange“, you might have to change a PSD or PNG file, export all the slices, modify the stylesheet, modify some other details to complement the new colour… the list goes on. Only for the client to say “nah, I don’t like the orange. Make it red again“.

#1 - “We can’t afford to pay you but we’ll let you have a link back to your site.”

How generous. This is a particularly common request, some variations of which are “we won’t pay you but all our customers will see it” and “we’ll pay you once the website turns a profit“. A few months ago, a lot of people were finding my website by searching Google for “UK web design student” or similar, and my site was ranking highly. Therefore I was getting one or two of these requests per week. I now have a stock response to this:

Thank you for your enquiry. MB Web Design does not undertake any speculative work. I encourage you to read this article.
http://www.no-spec.com/articles/why-speculation-hurts/

Of course, they won’t write back because they’re cheapskates who want to exploit students to get a website on the cheap. This issue only seems to be getting worse - everyone with a computer and a copy of Dreamweaver can log onto sites like Gumtree and Craigslist and call themselves web designers*, freelancer sites like Elance allow prospective customers outsource their web design requirements to the lowest bidder. Both of these tend to be sources where price is proportional to talent. Craigslist in particular is often frequented by businesses seeking students to do their work for free as it will give them something to put in their portfolio.

* This is a generalisation of course, there are some good designers on these sites as well. They’re the ones who charge the most.

Conclusion

This post has been rather tongue-in-cheek but does highlight a fundamental problem of being a web designer. People hire you because you are the expert. It is, of course, unreasonable to expect your clients to be as savvy as you so patience and understanding are pre-requisites. However, they ran a little thin with the people mentioned above!

I’m sure in a couple of months I’ll have to update this with a few more “nightmare” clients and potential clients. Feel free to add a comment with your own experiences.

I can’t believe some people still believe the myth that a duck’s quack doesn’t echo. Why the hell would a duck’s quack - a sound just like any other - not echo? Simply put: duck quacks (i.e. the quack is a sound wave), sound wave travels, hits surface, bounces back (i.e. an echo). Think about it - if it didn’t echo, it would be defying the laws of physics.

Of course it does, so where has this myth come from? Having read this story from BBC in 2003 and this article from Salford University, the common explanations are as follows.

Firstly, ducks are almost always outside. Think about how loud you have to yell to generate an audible echo when you’re outdoors, now think about how comparatively quiet a duck’s quack is. Seems unlikely - unless this is some 80-foot mega-duck - that the duck could quack loud enough for you to hear an echo.

Secondly, as reported here, it’s hard to hear an echo for a sound which fades in and out, such as a quack.

Thirdly, and perhaps most pertinently, people can be stupid. Someone started this “quacks don’t echo” stuff years ago, and it has been touted by “know-it-alls” as fact for years. It often appears on those “483 useless but interesting facts” that seem to get forwarded to my inbox every so often.

Spread this and dispel this absurd (though widely-held) myth.