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OWL4 Word Lists for Playing Competitive Scrabble®

Although you can see some word lists here, you can make your own lists of Scrabble® words using Mike's WHAT program, which is available at no cost.

Included on this web site are some lists of words of particular aid to folks learning useful words for competitive play in North America and other places using the same lexicon, such as Israel. All these words are to be found in the "OTCWL2018" or "Fourth Official Tournament and Club Word List" or "OWL4" (available only to club/tourney members at the NASPA web site). This book will be the only reference for words played which are of lengths between 2 and 15.

The Dictionary Committee of NASPA, in conjunction with Merriam-Webster, updated both the Official Scrabble® Players Dictionary (OSPD) and the Official Word List (OWL). The OSPD6 is now being sold to the public, and the most recently updated OWL, currently OWL3, is available to members of NASPA. There is separate small file with changes made for the OWL4. Once the supply of OWL3 books is exhausted, there will likely be an OWL4 book published by NASPA. Competitive play in clubs and tournaments switched to using OWL3 lists in April, 2015 and OWL4 in March, 2019.

The is sold in book stores, but since it is intended for school and recreational use it is missing the swear words and ethnic slurs which were present in previous editions. The OWL continues to include those nasty words. The OWL4 contains some words which are not nasty and are not included in the new OSPD6, especially trademark names, such as KLEENEX.

Unfortunately, these two word sources are not otherwise consistent with one another, as had been the case for the earlier editions of these books. How or whether this is will be resolved has not been announced. There are many words acceptable for official competitive play in North America which are missing from the OSPD6.

A very good one-page two-sided "Cheat Sheet" for getting started with Scrabble® OWL3 word knowledge is available at: http://www.cross-tables.com/cs.php. There will likely be a version of this for OWL4 soon.

Also see Archived old/dormant Scrabble® FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) by Steven Alexander - a comprehensive source.

Here are the OWL4 word lists found at this site: