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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.

On 24-Sep-18, Merriam-Webster published the Sixth Edition of the Official Scrabble® Players Dictionary (OSPD5), and it includes more than 300 new words which will be candidates for use in North American competitive SCRABBLE® starting 1-Mar-19.

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 "Official Tournament and Club Word List" or "OWL" (available only to club/tourney members at the NASPA web site). This book is 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 updated OWL, currently OWL3 (OTCWL2016) along with update lists, is available to members of NASPA. Competitive play in clubs and tournaments is switching to using the resulting NASPA Word List 2018 Edition (NWL2018) in March, 2019. New NWL2018 books will not be published until the current supply of OWL3 books have been sold.

The OSPD6 and OSPD5, OSPD5 is sold on Amazon and 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 NWL2018 contains some words which are not nasty yet 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, as of January, 2019. There are many words in NWL2018, thus acceptable for official competitive play in North America, which are missing from the OSPD6.

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

At present, the most current word lists here on this site are based on the NWL2018 (or OTCWL2018) Lexicon. Lists based on the previous OWL2 and OWL3 Lexicons continue to be available here. We do not have School SCRABBLE Word Lists on this site, but the WHAT program does support the lexicons for School SCRABBLE.

Here are the word lists currently found at this site:

• All the NWL2018 Two-Letter Words, with Meanings
• NWL2018 Word Lists
  
  
• All the OWL3 Two-Letter Words, with Meanings
• OWL3 Word Lists
  
  
• All the OWL2 Two-Letter Words, with Meanings
• All the OSPD4 Two-Letter Words, with Meanings
• OWL2 Word Lists
  
  
• OWL1 (TWL98) Word Lists
  
  

Here are some word lists found at other sites:

• John Chew's Word Lists, including plausible phonies and phonies with anagrams. Mike Wolfberg was a major contributor to the latter list.
  
  
• Seattle Club Lists and Study Tools