"DOH!"

I know this word well. I hear it virtually every night of the week as Homer Simpson racks his brain – which is known to be no bigger than a walnut – for solutions to various problems.

I know the word, but I don’t think of it as a proper one, a word defined in an English dictionary. And I certainly would never have considered playing it in a game of Scrabble.

Not, that is, until I met Cyndy Walker-Firth and Marie Gard.

Intelligent and quick-thinking, they surround themselves with words – everyday words, obscure words, and words that most people would not think of as words. Words like DOH.

“DOH is a word, and has been recognised in the English language for some time,” says Cyndy. “There are a lot of three-letter words that most people never hear or speak, but which are bonafide words.”

She hands me a laminated sheet covered in bite-sized words, and I realise I know barely any of them.

AHI, DUX, FEG, IGG, PLU, UMU…there are hundreds of words I’ve never seen before.

“We don’t always know what they mean,” says Marie, “We don’t necessarily need to know when we’re playing.”

The women are experts in the game of Scrabble. They belong to Shipley Scrabble Club whose members meet once a month to try and outsmart each other with triple-letter and double-word scores.

And they love it. Their passion shines through as I nervously join them for a quick game – and armfuls of tips.

“It is a wonderful game – it is never the same twice,” says former Grattan worker Cyndy, 61, of Allerton, who began playing with a friend to relax while bringing up her children. “And the people who play it are really nice.”

Adds Marie, 83, of Baildon, who has been a club member for around 30 years: “I enjoy it because I don’t like numbers. I used to play at home and heard about the club through one of the nurses at St Luke’s where I worked as a ward clerk. It was originally based in Wibsey and was called The Bradfordians.”

As we each collect our seven tiles, I am fully aware that, despite my profession as a wordsmith, I am well and truly out of my depth alongside these two.

I am shocked when, almost immediately, Cyndy opens with TWINNED – using all her seven letters and bagging an extra 50 points. In all the years I’ve been playing – usually with my family at Christmas – I’ve never succeeded in doing that, yet here’s Cyndy casually laying out all her tiles.

The women seem to have no problem using all the tiles in their racks. “You see if it was my turn I could put NATTERS on there for my first go,” Marie tells me. “With the 50 extra points I’d get 65 in total which is a good start.”

Cyndy gives me a useful tip, in the not uncommon event of having a rack of vowels. “EUOUAE is a term used in Medieval music to denote the sequence of tones – you can remember it with the words ‘Every unicorn owes you an egg’. And if you put ‘S’ on the end it is a seven-letter word.”

We carry on, and soon words such as QUAT (the leaves of a shrub which are chewed like tobacco), using the triple letter score for the ten-point Q – and ZOA (animals or organisms) have appeared and I begin to think Cyndy and Marie are getting tired of my asking: “Is that a word?”

“There are lots of short words which have a high score,” says Marie. “It is useful to know them, and many of them are vital if you have only vowels left towards the end.”

In the game, players are allowed to use words they are not familiar with, so long as they are on the official list. This bothers me and I explain that, when we play at home, the challenge is that you have to know the word.

“You do at some clubs, but generally you can use lists,” says Marie. I was pleased to hear that they can’t be used in competitions.

The women go on to tell me about a woman from North Yorkshire who cheated in a tournament by using extra tiles she had hidden down her boots. I play ‘GOATS’ and am told not to waste an ‘S’ for the sake of one extra point. “It is handy to have an ‘S’ to link words,” says Marie. “And you have to be careful not to leave a space open for your opponent.”

I was too busy thinking how I could grab valuable points – it hadn’t entered my head to consider my opponents’ moves.

Marie’s highest score is 598, with an average score of 350, while Cyndy’s is around the same, with an average of 360. Players at the club receive certificates for high scores as they improve.

Regular players can, over the course of the game, work out what letters others have and try to prevent them placing their tiles to rake in high scores. In competitions, some players photograph the board after the game to re-enact it.

Members of the club – who live across Bradford district and beyond – range in age from 13 to 92. Blind people can play too, on special Braille boards. Beginners are welcome. “We have players of all abilities, some people come to play for fun and others want to take part in competitions,” says Cyndy.

With so many different score combinations, the game improves mental agility. “Our nonagenarian is so quick with adding,” says Cyndy. Others, like Marie, aren’t natural mathematicians. “If you have a score of, say 27, and you have to triple it, I’ve got to stop and think about it,” she says.

Cyndy has a fascinating collection of Scrabble boards, which she adds to at every opportunity.

“I’ve got 30 ordinary boards, special edition boards and foreign boards,” she says. “If I’m at a car boot sale with my husband he will suddenly say ‘Cyndy, over there – Scrabble board. I buy them all.”

Even if the board has seen better days, the tiles are useful for the club.

Members not only play in Shipley, but have the chance to travel abroad on special Scrabble holidays. Both Cyndy and Marie have been to Spain, with players from across the country.

Cyndy is passionate about Scrabble, also playing on the internet. “Some mornings I play as soon as I get out of bed,” she says. “There is always someone to play against, and your opponents come from all over the world – this morning I was playing someone from New Zealand.”

She plays postal Scrabble, which is intriguing mainly for the length of time it takes to complete a game. “The games master sends me a rack of letters and I play, then I send it back and it is then sent to my opponent and so on,” says Cyndy. “It takes months.”

Every year the club organises two tournaments for charity, with Clubs from across the north competing.

When I get home I look up ‘EUOUAE’ but it doesn’t appear in my Oxford English dictionary. No matter. Now that I know it, I will happily use it. You never know, EUOUAE could be my trump card this Christmas.

  • Shipley Scrabble Club meet every Thursday at 7pm in the Peaseland Lounge of the Anchorage Residential Home, Westcliffe Road, Shipley, except the third Thursday of the month when they meet at the Community Centre opposite Shipley Town Hall. For more information visit shipleyscrabbleclub.org.uk or contact Cyndy on (01274) 492210.