The term SOWPODS was coined to cover the
convergence of the two International Scrabble©
word sources, OSW and OSPD, as deployed for the 1991
World Scrabble©
Championships in London and subsequent World Championships. SOWPODS
is an acronym derived from anagramming OSW and OSPD.
Official
Tournament and Club Word List (OWL)
OWL is an expanded version of the Official Scrabble Players
Dictionary (OSPD) [3rd edition]. The additional words included in
OWL (but not OSPD) are mostly those which were expurgated (censored)
from OSPD for the popular market, i.e. words (arbitrarily)
considered offensive. OWL also goes up to 9 letters (plus
extensions), whereas OSPD only goes up to 8 letters (plus
extensions). OWL is "published" by the National Scrabble
Association (NSA) in the United States. It is distributed to NSA
members only. OWL is primarily used in North American and Israel.
OWL is also known as TWL98, which means Tournament Word List.
OWL2/LWL
contains the words from the Official Word List 2nd edition, plus the Long
Word List. The OWL2 contains words up to nine letters long
plus their inflections, while the LWL contains words 10-15 letters long.
OTCWL2014 is
the third in the OTCWL series, and its
working title was OWL3. The name was changed
however, due to two concerns. One was that
with the inclusion of longer words of 10–15
letters, the nature of the book had
fundamentally changed; the other was that
the name of the first two volumes had been
prefaced by the name of our predecessor
organization, the
NSA, and that our new book therefore
technically had a different name.
Changes
This edition
sees new words from three sources:
-
Merriam-Webster's database (essentially,
their 11th Collegiate Dictionary)
- Canadian
Oxford Dictionary, 2nd edition
- Oxford
College Dictionary, 2nd edition
It includes
for the first time words of up to 15
letters, which were formally only available
separately in the
Long List
It includes
almost 9,000 words that will be newly
acceptable in competitive play. The more
widely publicized figure of 5,000 new words
refers to those that are being added to the
shorter
OSPD5. 51% of the new words are
coincidentally found in the international
CSW2012 lexicon; the rest are not.
OWL14, work began
on OTCWL2014 soon after the
establishment of NASPA in 2009, with NASPA
and
Merriam-Webster negotiating the scope of
the changes involved, including the new word
references to be used. Then lexicographers
from both organizations started working in
parallel, with the MW team searching for
suitable words that had been added to the MW
database since the last edition, and the
NASPA
Dictionary Committee (DC) looking for
new words in the Oxford College Dictionary,
2nd edition, and the Canadian Oxford
Dictionary, 2nd edition.
There have been
some 232 words added to OTCWL2018
(Official Tournament and Club Word List).
As of March 1st 2021 NASPA (North
American Scrabble Players Association) will
be using them in tournaments and at their
clubs.
The Pixie Pit will also be using
these new words in OWL18, and as of
December 12th 2021, we also have OWL20
and from the 6th of April 2024 NWL2023.
NWL2023 is the latest NASPA Word
List (NWL) dictionary which has been the
official word reference for SCRABBLE play in
the United States and Canada since March 1,
2019, when it replaced the Official
Tournament and Club Word List. It is
edited by the NASPA Dictionary
Committee.
In early
2014, the DC finished its work, which
also became the basis for the
Official SCRABBLE Players Dictionary's
5th edition, used in school and recreational
play.
OSW
itself stands for Official Scrabble©
Words, a publication derived solely from the Chambers Dictionary,
published in Scotland. OSW is exclusively used in the United Kingdom
only.
WOW24
is the dictionary used by
The Word Game
Players’ Organization, (WGPO), the inclusive home for
competitive word gaming in North America. WOW24 was added
in April 2024.
CSW07 List, Collins
Tournament and Club Word List. This is the authority for all
tournament and club play. All tournaments which are either run
and/or rated by the ABSP use this reference work as the arbiter
for determining the validity of every word played. It contains
every word added to TWL last year, and more new words obtained
from Collins English Dictionary.
CSW or Collins Scrabble Words
is the global world source used in Scrabble. CSW2021 is the
newest edition, in previous years the global word list was also
known as SOWPODS. CSW is not a single dictionary but an amalgam
of three: Collins (7th edition, 2005), Chambers (1998 edition)
and TWL, the current Northern American wordlist. TWL itself is
also drawn from a range of sources.
CSW19, is the transition from
the 2015 version of the Collins Scrabble Tournament & Club Word
List (hereinafter referred to as CSW15) to the 2019 version
(hereinafter referred to as CSW19) involves 2862 new words in
total, of which 1258 of length 2 to 9 letters, with 617 of
length 2 to 8 letters. There are 29 deletions of existing words,
of which 6 are of length 2 to 8 letters.
CSW21, is exactly the same as CSW19, it differs only by
having 419 words that may cause offence to some groups of people
removed. Those words are all deemed as inappropriate insomuch as
they offend on the basis of racial or social discrimination and injustice.
Here at The Pixie Pit we have CSW, CSW15,
CSW19 and CSW21 (Collins
Tournament and Club Word Lists) Dictionaries.
OSPD
stands for Official Scrabble©
Players Dictionary, a publication derived primarily from the
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, but also including words from four
other major college dictionaries. It is published by
Merriam-Webster, in the United States. OSPD is exclusively used in
North America, Thailand, and Israel.
OSPD4
is a major update of OSPD3, and contains many words found in
SOWPODS and OWL/TWL98.
All
OSPD's are owned and copyrighted by Hasbro. After OSPD4 Hasbro
refused to licence any further electronic download lists of their
dictionaries. So therefore no one can obtain those dictionaries,
(OSPD5, OSPD6 and OSPD7) online, and must purchase the hard copy
book. This means we cannot add OSPD5, OSPD6 and OSPD7 to the
Scrabble game as electronic downloads of OSPD5, OSPD6 and OSPD7
are not available sorry.
The
following countries are known to be fully SOWPODS:- Australia,
Bahrain, Ghana, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, Malaysia,
Malta, New Zealand, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar,
Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Trinidad, United Arab
Emirates, United Kingdom.
OWL1,
OWL2 and CSW List have been added to cater for the Tournament Players who
play here. The all dictionaries search results page provides all
lookups to accommodate all players. OSPD4 is used primarily in
Canada, US, Thailand, and Israel. SOWPODS is used internationally.
Note,
we use freely available files off the Net as the dictionaries here.
If there are any errors you know of, please consult the actual book.
It would be nice if you tell us, so we can update our
database.
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