Defensive strategies for Appletters

Since Appletters involves building a zigzagging snake-like line of words, where new words can only be built off the beginning or end of the snake, the options for play can be sometimes highly constrained. Devious players can use this to their advantage.

For instance, you can position words such that you are able to form words from a position that others are unlikely to be able to. As in the example below, where the presence of the word SLIP forces new words starting from the V to be built only to the left, making the V tricky to deal with.

   SPORK
 V L
 I I
 MOP

Among the very few words that end with V are rev and shiv.

    SPORK
REV L
  I I
  MOP

Similarly, there are few words that start with X. Examples include xenon (the atomic element), xi (the Greek letter), xebec (a kind of three-masted Mediterranean ship), xylem (the part of a plant that transports water - like a plant's circulatory system), and xeric (super dry, desert-like).

I think that the only people who will be able to generate words that end in a J or Q are people who have deliberately memorized such words for such purpose as they all look like questionable Scrabble jibberish to me. By properly constructing the snake, one or both ends can almost be completely cut off using this tactic.

There's also what I call the Ouroboros stratagem.

Suppose you have manipulated the situation so the snake looks like this:

    SPORK
REV L   N
E I I   I
L MOP   V
I       E
C       S

A really fiendishly clever thing to do is to build a word that joins up the beginnings and end of the snake, like so:

    SPORK
REV L   N
E I I   I
L MOP   V
I       E
CALENDARS

If it is allowed (and I can find nothing in the instructions that forbids it), finding a way to make the Appletters snake into a closed loop pretty definitively ends the game. In my book, whoever pulls off such a stunt should instantly win, as when you sink the eight-ball on the break in pool.