I gave only a quick read, and I'm completely unfamiliar with Scrabble... but: why not use a Markov chain? I would start looking at the two step case, using only the most probable letter. In this case you have to remember a 26x26 matrix, if this doesn't work you can extend it to the top-n letters.
In the abstract? Probably. But in human domains I suspect you're unlikely to find something very amenable to this sort of approach without a lot of looking. I actually think he's better off just memorizing because the words are human words from human minds and just trusting to your own human mind is going to work better than a simple math approach.
The one thing I'd consider adding is memorizing the tuple (word, origin), because English's problem is that my first paragraph is simplified for English; we actually use many different distinct human patterns, and helping the brain partition the problem might be helpful.
[+] [-] shef|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] danger|15 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] danger|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jerf|15 years ago|reply
The one thing I'd consider adding is memorizing the tuple (word, origin), because English's problem is that my first paragraph is simplified for English; we actually use many different distinct human patterns, and helping the brain partition the problem might be helpful.
[+] [-] rd108|15 years ago|reply