Hopefully I don’t regret sharing this too quickly.
I just finished a game of Words with Friends with a rather unusual play that allowed me to win pretty comfortably. The letter pile was exhausted and I only had 5 letters left in my rack: Q, I, F, U, and E. The game score was close enough and the layout was such that I a ended up putting a bit more effort into figuring out how to play my last letters.
After puttering around, I managed to form the word FIQUE, which I thought unusual because it’s rare that the Q gets played in the middle of a word. To make the play even more unusual, I hooked onto the word AID with the Q! I’m pretty sure outside of hooking to make the word QI, I don’t think I’ve ever hooked with a Q quite like that.
Naturally, I decided to look them up. Seemed the least I could do, seeing as they allowed me to win the game.
The word fique can refer to two things: the plant or the fiber that the plant yields. The fique plant is a member of the pineapple family with long, spiky leaves. It grows in South America, where it is used to create fique fibre. The fibre is very strong and used for weaving. Here’s an article with some pictures of the plant as well as the fiber and some photo-documentation of how the fiber is harvested from the plant. Interesting.
The word qaid is more straight forward- it’s a Muslim leader and can also be spelled caid (another word that could come in handy). There’s an anagram for QAID– QADI. It’s also a Muslim word and refers to a Muslim judge.
Considering the word SUQ is also a word of Muslim origin, it seems the Muslim language is the place to go to find unusual Q words.