An I is an important letter. It can be used to form numbers, like I for one, II for two, III for three and so on. Apple uses it as a symbol for their own products like iPod, iMac or iPhone. Thanks to the dot on the i, we have the idiom “Dot the i’s and cross the t’s“ for people who are meticulous.
The I in Words with Friends
My smartphone rings all the time because of one app named Words with Friends. That leads me to the question: How many I are in Words with Friends and why? Sure, I could have checked the internet for it, but I wanted to get serious. So I started another match to count them myself. You can find the letter I eight times in Words with Friends. If you use jokers you can get the I two more times. So it is possible to get an I ten times. There is just one letter that is used more frequently in this game, the A. Let me show you how important the letter I is in Words with Friends.
The Pronoun I
The I can be used as a complete word, a pronoun. But is it possible to use it in Words with Friends? If so, it could only be used for the first word in the game. I have never tried this before because I would get only one point for it. So I started the game seven times until I got an I in the beginning. Just to see that Words with Friends does not accept the pronoun I as a complete word. So I will not be able to use it.
The Prefix in- or im-
One option could be to use it in a prefix. The prefix in- gives the word a different meaning. It changes it into the opposite. The words credible or vulnerable, for example, can be changed to incredible or invulnerable. So I use the I and the N to get more points than my friends who use adjectives such as these. If the first letter of the word you want to change is a B or a P, you could not use in-. Here you need im-. The prefix in- is changed into im- for importent or imperfect.
The Plural
While playing Words with Friends, I had another problem. The Y is only used two times in a match. A lot of words end with this letter, like dictionary, enemy and possibility. Writing the plural of it makes the Y become IES. So you have got dictionaries, enemies and possibilities. But this is just for nouns. There are lots of adjectives ending in Y. Many of these can be used to compare things. Scary becomes scarier and scariest. I often do not have an idea for a word, because I’m missing a letter for the one I had in mind. This is a way of doing without the letter Y if you cannot think of an alternative. With some words you can get an I by simply pluralizing them. This applies to several words of Latin origin ending in -us, such as bacillus, cactus and colossus. Just replace -us with i to form the plural. This way you can win a few points when you do not have an U or an S.
Finally, to show you how important the vowel I is, I have counted all the Is in this text. I used it 176 times in normal words (not counting the italic Is).
I hope I was able to show you how many I are in Words with Friends and why they are so important.