Does playing scrabble or other letter to word games temporarily mess up your word recognition?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I play the Thread games here. Where a new word is created from the letters in the old word.

Focusing entirely on the letters sometimes makes me question if the word is spelled correctly.

Like priest. It didn’t look correct. I had to double check the online dictionary.

The word recognition problem goes away after I do something else for a little while.

I normally would recognize the word in a sentence instantly. That’s because we read by recognizing words.

Is that a common problem after playing games like Scrabble?

I’m mildy autistic but was always an advanced reader in school. My mom introduced me to books at an early age. I read for pleasure most of my life.

I used to spend a afternoon reading a book. My eyes tire more easily and now I prefer audio books.

2

Probably related to the phenomenon known as semantic satiation.

3

That could be it.

Seeing a word in a sentence adds context.

Focusing entirely on the letters is not how I recognize words.

Recognizing words is how I catch misspellings. The pattern of the word looks wrong.

Thankfully, the word association problem goes away quickly if I distract myself watching tv or talking to someone.

4

It happens to me once of a while, but fortunately never lasts.

5

Any distraction makes the hyper-focus on letters go away.

6

Reminds me of an anecdote I read once by a (IIRC) journalist in a Scrabble tournament who challenged the word WAS because WA isn’t one of the legal two letter words, so obviously more than one WA can’t be a word either.

7

I have played Scrabble most of my life. Before I could spell okay(well enough).

I’ve done crosswords as soon as my Daddy would let me sit on his lap and help him do them.

Yes, this is the curse of word games. I try to picture the word in my mind like I am reading it either in a sentence or if I can recall the dictionary item. That’s how I cope.

I’m sure many people have brains that can do instant recall. Not me.

8

Yeah, seeing words out of context, even common ones, can mess with perception. My wife and I play Wordle together and one of the rare words we didn’t get was ‘debut’. We both looked at each other and simultaneously said "what does ‘debut’ (pronouncing it ‘deh-butt’) mean?? Until we both did a facepalm a second later :man_facepalming:

My wife is a long-time Scrabble player, and she said one time someone spelled the word ‘ton’ and she said what does ‘ton’ (pronouncing it like the ‘o’ in ‘on’) mean? Ohhhh, ‘ton’ (tun)" as in 2000 lbs… :woman_facepalming:

9

Millhouse, on The Simpsons: I’ve said, ‘Jiminy Jilickers’ so many times, the words have lost all meaning!

10

This made me think about what my husband is going through. He had a stroke in December. During cognitive therapy sessions, he can tell almost all of the details from an extremely short story because there’s context. However, when asked to repeat as many random words from a list that he’s heard immediately and after intervals he has a challenging time. It’s typical with stroke victims, the context matters. And, I apologize, I know this is off the topic.

11

It was suggested that he play Boggle.