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OWL2 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 for sale. There is also a free demo form of the same program, named someWHAT, which includes OWL2 words up to six letters in length.

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 found in the "Second Official Tournament and Club Word List" or "OWL2" (available only to NSA members at the NASPA web site), published by Merriam-Webster. This book is the only reference for words played which are less than 10 letters in length. This list is based on the Fourth Edition of the Official Scrabble® Players Dictionary, but it also includes words which are deemed offensive; these are omitted from the OSPD4, since it is used for school play.

The Dictionary Committee of the NASPA has produced updates to both the Official Scrabble® Players Dictionary and the Official Word List. The Fourth Edition of the OSPD is now being sold, and the updated OWL has been available from the NSA since late January, 2006. There are many typos in the OSPD4. There are some typos in the printed OWL2:

Competitive play in clubs and tournaments switched to using these new lists on March 1, 2006.

The Fourth Edition 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 where present in previous editions. The OWL continues to include those nasty words. The OWL2 may contain some words which are not nasty and are not included in the new OSPD4, such as trademarks, such as KLEENEX.

Before June 16, 2003, words of length greater than 9 letters may also have come from the longer word source dictionary, which was the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary Tenth Edition. Since then, Merriam-Webster has produced the Eleventh Edition. This book is used for words longer than length 8 for School Scrabble® competitions.

The Official Long Words List has been compiled and created by the Dictionary Committee of the NASPA. As of June 16, 2003, this list became the ONLY acceptable official long word list for use at sanctioned NSA Clubs and Tournaments. These are words of length 10 - 15, as a supplement to the OWL. A second edition of the long words is planned.

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

Here are the OWL2 word lists found at this site:

The first four links above get you to an HTML file, and the remaining ones are for MS/Word .doc files. The definitons of new words files were updated on 3-Mar-06 to show all definitions of each word, not merely the first one.

More lists will be included here, as time permits. I expect to produce OWL2 lists which will be updated versions of the TWL98 lists I have had available here on my site for many years. Please let me know if there is something you would like to see. Here is a significant start of this work:


back to the top of this page This page, maintained by Mike Wolfberg, was last updated on November 15, 2019 .