A "vowel dump" is a word with a lot of vowels that you play in order to keep your rack balanced or simply because you have a lot of vowels. We will define a vowel dump as being a word with n letters and roundup(n/2)+1 or more vowels. Here "roundup" means round up fractions to the next highest integer. So a 3-letter vowel dump must have 3 vowels; a 4-letter vowel dump must have at least 3 vowels; a 5-letter or 6-letter vowel dump must have at least 4 vowels; a 7-letter or 8-letter vowel dump must have at least 5 vowels; and so on.
After all that build up, it turns out that there is only one 3-letter vowel dump: EAU!
But there are many 4-letter vowel dumps; 62 of them, in fact. The list below shows all 3-or-4-letter vowel dumps listed in playrank order, starting from the most played vowel dump AQUA. All of these words get played fairly often and should be memorized.
Longer vowel dumps (5 or more letters) are given in a separate post. There is also a SOWPODS version of this list (reminder: what you see below is for OWL2).
1. aqua
2. ajee
3. awee
4. eau
5. quai
6. jiao
7. aeon
8. iota
9. etui
10. odea
11. agee
12. aero
13. ixia
14. ooze
15. inia
16. toea
17. emeu
18. zoea
19. anoa
20. obia
21. aide
22. naoi
23. ohia
24. area
25. alae
26. ogee
27. eave
28. alee
29. eaux
30. agio
31. amie
32. asea
33. ciao
34. idea
35. eide
36. uvea
37. auto
38. epee
39. ouzo
40. ease
41. amia
42. oboe
43. oleo
44. olio
45. aloe
46. euro
47. unai
48. lieu
49. aria
50. ilea
51. olea
52. meou
53. raia
54. beau
55. akee
56. ilia
57. roue
58. ague
59. urea
60. unau
61. aura
62. moue
63. luau
This article represents original research from ScrabbleGuru.com. Come visit us for more!