Switched Keys

Most experienced players know the sets of words that you need to know to improve in Scrabble. There are many separate guides but they are pretty similar. Players can know how good an opponent is by how far down the list you've gone. To get an edge, it may be useful to do some inquisitive study, the "I wonder" kind of study where you learn some words (and tactics) not in the standard list.

One of the tactics I've been using is to find alternate spellings of common (from a Scrabbler's point of view) words by replacing one letter. Alternate spellings are nice because it seems easier to remember two words for the price of one. 

I found that there are several alternate spellings of Q words. There are 26 words where the Q can be replaced by a C, from CAT/QAT to QABALISTIC/CABALISTIC.

In Hoot you would use the Replace search option for that, searching for Q?C. In standard search you can have Hoot include the original and the alternate by selecting that in Settings. Power search only returns the original.

Replacing Q with K returns 69 words and G can replace Q in 41. Of course many of them are different words with different definitions, but that doesn't matter that much. I knew a few already.

In that study I wondered if QINDAR/QINTAR had an alternate spelling so I searched for the pattern "?IN?AR" and only got 4 matching words. 

LINEAR
MINBAR
QINDAR
QINTAR

Still curious, I searched for "?IN?AR?" and found that there were 11 matches, a short enough list to remember several words in it, particularly ZINGARA/E/I/O, and of course QINDARS and QINTARS.

Note: If you are returning the alternate spelling and there are a lot of results it may take a long time and may not be helpful. Cancel and narrow the search. One such search is where Y replaces I. Limiting it to just 4 letter words yields 116 pairs, although there are some interesting ones there.