A WORDSMITH grandmother has published a book to help players reach top scores in Scrabble.
Sheila John, 75, from Little Neston, spent the last few years writing Wicked Wee Words on and off, a book which lists three-letter words that use high-scoring letters such as Q and X.
Sheila, who says she has always enjoyed playing Scrabble, said: “This is something that hasn’t been done before.
“It’s basically a list of three-letter words, usually with high-scoring letters, to be used for playing Scrabble.
“I wrote it about five years ago and it took me about eight or nine months; I’d just do a bit every now and then.
“At first I was just doing it for fun and was printing it off to give to people, but then my printer gave up the ghost and I decided to have a look at self-publishing.
“I decided to go with an American publisher because Scrabble is very popular over there.”
Sheila, a retired pharmacy technician who used to work at Clatterbridge Hospital, teamed up with US publisher AuthorHouse and her work is now available from Amazon and Barnes and Noble as a book and e-book.
And Sheila, who is originally from Scotland but has lived in Little Neston for 30 years, even refers to her book when playing in the Scrabble group that she is a member of, using it to help improve her scores.
She said: “It really is a thrill seeing the published book.
“It was something that was just for fun but I’ve enjoyed doing it.
“I haven’t done anything like this before because I’m not a creative writer.”
She added: “It is a bit different from a usual dictionary because the words are listed in a way that if the letter you have is in the middle of a word then its is easy to find.”
All of the words used in Sheila’s book were taken from the official Scrabble dictionary, to ensure they are able to be used in the game.
