Customer Reviews

The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary

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The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, 3rd edition (OSPD3) is more valuable as a list of acceptable words for use when playing Scrabble than it is as a dictionary. That being said, it is not totally useful as a list of words. The 3rd edition updates the word list from the 2nd edition, but leaves out offensive words, to allow the dictionary to be used when playing with children. If you don't mind not having offensive words in your Scrabble word arsenal, then this book is fine for you.

However, if you want your word list to be complete, then you need the Official Tournament and Club Word List (OWL), which is available only from the National Scrabble Association. Unfortunately, you need to become a member before they will sell you the book. It doesn't contain definitions, either, only a list of 2- to 9-letter words. And, you still need Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th Edition to get the longer words.. ..

Now that you know how to collect all the words allowable in Scrabble tournament and club play, know this: Your friends and family will complain when you try to use many of these words! The official word list is a compilation of all the words from the 10 most popular dictionaries that satisfy the conditions listed in the Scrabble rules for acceptable words. So, some dictionary has defined ED to mean "education" (presumably from phrases like "special ed" or "driver's ed"). However, it's not considered an abbreviation because that dictionary didn't specifically mention that it's an abbreviation. Also, foreign words are unacceptable, but there are a lot of words of foreign origin that are acceptable (CHEZ, CIAO, CASA, etc.), and spellings of foreign letters (ALPHA, BETA, XI, QOPH, etc.). And good luck explaining that KUE is "the letter Q".

So, if you need a list of a lot of words that are appropriate for school or family play, get the OSPD3. If you want definitions, (What the heck is a JNANA, anyway?) get the OSPD3. If you want to use lots of swear words and derogatory names, don't get the OSPD3. If you want an official word list, get the OWL and MW's Collegiate Dictionary, or find a word list online. If you want to tick off your opponents with your immense vocabulary of useless words, any of these word lists will work great.

The OSPD is no ordinary dictionary. There are capsule definitions given but no usage tips. All the entries are in caps. Since there are no proper names allowed, this doesn't matter. The most important information about the entries (from the point of view of the Scrabble player) is how they are spelled, how they are made plural, how the gerund and past tenses are formed, and whether you can make comparatives or superlatives out of the word and how.

For example the plural of "bijou" (a jewel) is either "bijoux" or "bijous," and the OSPD gives that info. The gerund of "snib" (to latch) is "snibbing" while the comparative of "sleazy" is "sleazier" and the superlative, "sleaziest." There is also the adverb, "sleazily."

The -er form of a word is listed separately. If you don't find it, it's not a word!--or at least that should be our agreement. For example "renown" is a noun and a verb but there is no "renowner"--"someone who makes renown" since the verb is intransitive, but there is a "tearer"--"one who tears." (There's also a "terror," but never mind.)

By the way, words beginning with the prefix "re" as in, e.g., "reword" are listed separately from words that begin with the "re" that is not a prefix. Again, "renown" is not listed after "rename" but follows "renovate" a few pages later.

The other peculiarities of the entries are explained in the Introduction, which I highly recommend you read. (Be sure your informed opponent has read it!) There it is explained why "You should look always look at several entries above and below the expected place..." when searching for the word in question. You should also read the brief Preface in which the editors explain why some offensive (especially four-letter) words do not appear. Note too that words longer than eight letters (and indeed one-letter words) do not appear (except for some inflected forms) because they are seldom if ever used in a Scrabble game. Of course most veteran players have on occasion played a very nice nine-letter, double triple-word, 50-point bonus word. I did myself once. I wish I could remember what it was.

For casual players, who typically use a collegiate dictionary to settle spelling disputes, the contents of this little green book will come as something of a shock. You mean "zax" is a word? How about "zek"? Can you believe "jefe"? This is just to name three off hand that are not in the Random House college dictionary I have in front of me.

There are in fact in the OSPD seven words beginning with a "q" not followed by a "u" (qaid, qanat, qat, qindar, qintar, qiviut, and qoph--in case you're in the middle of a game). Don't laugh. In some households there is a Scrabble game going on at all times just as in some other households the TV is always on. Random House's college dictionary doesn't give "qaid" or "qanat" but surprisingly has "qadi" which is not given by the OSPD.

I think Scrabble has influenced dictionary compilers because if you look at the Merriam-Webster (the same company that produces the OSPD) Ninth Collegiate (copyright 1985) you will find only qintar, qiviut and qoph. But even more tellingly if you look at Merriam-Webster's Second International Unabridged Dictionary (I have the edition of 1950), the Grand Dame of American dictionaries, you will find that there are no words beginning with a "q" not followed by a "u": no "qat," no "qintar," no "qoph," etc.

With so much variation between dictionaries, the good folks at Merriam-Webster saw a need and filled it. Most people I know play "house rules" and rely on the dictionary(ies) that happen to be in residence. My recommendation is that you buy two of these green books, one in paperback to take with you when you take your Scrabble game on the road, and another in hardback to have at home. Of course if you haven't used this book before it will take some getting used to. But buy a Scrabble software program and practice with this book at hand, and after some time you will find that, with all those extra words to play with, you can really rack up the points!

One other thing to realize is that some of the spellings and even some of the words in the OSPD are really not standard anymore and should not be considered part of the so-called "Standard English" that we all read and (usually) speak. This fact does not detract from the utility of the OSPD for Scrabble players; however, as other reviewers have pointed out, when writing a term paper use a "real" dictionary.

In short, it is not the plentiful number of Scrabble-type words that appear in this dictionary that makes it so valuable--although that is certainly one of its best features. It is rather the definitive way the OSPD demonstrates exactly how different forms of words are spelled, something not always done in your average dictionary.

The OSPD is most valuable because it settles spelling disputes in a quick and unambiguous manner, and that alone is reason enough to buy this book.

I realize my title is of vague, if not poor in meaning. My thoughts of this dictionary are like that.

I love Scrabble. With an English degree, a bookwormish lifestyle and a highly verbal family, I arrogantly call it a challenge to be taken down by another player. The Scrabble dictionary is part of my confidence.

This dictionary standarizes the game. What other dictionaries lack is consistency and clarity. What counts as a foreign word? This dictionary creates a boundary otherwise unavailable for word usage.

If I played Scrabble in a league, I might be pickier about the words made available. But I like to play Scrabble the most with my aunt and Grandma out on a porch at a cottage on a lake, or at a coffeehouse with an editor friend of mine, highly caffeinated... enjoying family or friendship more than the game. Therefore, the Official Scrabble Dictionary is plenty for me.

Tidy little definitions are provided. "Hemagog" is defined as "an agent that promoters blood flow." Lets me know I can put an "S" on the end to pluralize it, that 'hemagog' is a noun. I am happy with that, yet fully aware a hematologist could tell me a hundred more things.

Profanity unfortunately is in there. All our favorite four-letter words seem to have made the cut. Yes, even THAT one. But the fact of the matter is what makes for common conversation is not always appropriate family discussion. A "legal" word in this book makes the game awkward when players with young children. I'm not saying don't buy the book. I am saying that you should be aware.

I recommend this book with the caveat that if you want to know everything about a word, buy the Oxford English Dictionary. If you want to play a relaxed game of Scrabble... buy this book.

Anthony Trendl

This is a seriously misguided edition. Words which appeared in the First and Second editions but are now considered "likely to offend" have been eliminated. This means that some of the oldest words in the English language have been erased, even though the rules of Scrabble expressly permit archaic and slang terms. Merriam-Webster's job is not that of moral arbiter and if they thought it important to have a version suitable for children, then they should have released a separate children's edition, rather than mutilating the adults' one.

I first ran into a scrabble players dictionary while travelling, Unfortunately the 3rd edition dictionary does not have lists of 2 and 3 letter words in it, you have to look them up normally. The former dictionary was way better as it not only had the entire list of words from a-z but also had separate sections of 2 letter words and 3 letter words, they only took up about 5 pages between them. Try to find a copy of the old version, it is better!!

This dictionary, OSPD for short, was first compiled nearly three decades ago. It was a compendium of all words found in any of five college dictionaries of that era, which predates computer-assisted lexicography. One of them went out of print soon after. Some, but not all, more recent editions of the remaining four have provided new entries for subsequent editions of the OSPD. As the current OSPD is about a decade old, quite possibly it lacks the new words from any college dictionary's latest edition. Furthermore, at least two new college-style dictionaries have entered the marketplace, and one of the old ones is reliably reported to have fired all its lexicographers.

This is no longer the official source used in clubs and tournaments. Their official wordlist includes about 200 forms ranging from what is mildly offensive mainly in lexicographic circles (e.g.: libber, peeing) to extremely offensive (the f-word, the n-word, etc.). The latest printing of the paperback OSPD, 3rd edition, has silently deleted about a dozen forms (da, skiwears, etc.) to make it less unofficial, though at the cost of making it slightly incompatible with earlier printings that your neighbors might use.

It's not a dictionary. Definitions are often so incomplete that you cannot even use this book to check spellings. Pronunciations are non-existent. It is sometimes not straightforward to find what is listed, so that REGLOW is present, though it appears several pages before REGMA. The overwhelming majority of people who enjoy Scrabble want to know more about words than this opuscule provides.

Whether it's Scrabble is a thornier question. Most people tend to regard Scottish words as foreign words not acceptable under the rules. With this dictionary you don't even have the opportunity to reject Scotticisms, since they're not marked. And there are a lot of them, the majority from that 30-year-old out-of-print dictionary, which hadn't been thoroughly revised in at least 60 years. On the other hand, fewer than half the Scottish words you might find in a Scottish-English literary work are present, and still fewer of the Scottish words found in a typical Scottish-language website. (I refer to Scottish, not Gaelic.)

Most people think that Scrabble words should be spelled correctly, yet many OSPD entries reflect spellings no longer found in dictionaries, some of which appeared only briefly in only one of the five college dictionaries which were consulted in one or more printings to form this book. Nearly all English words had a variety of spellings before civilization settled on a correct one. In particular, some sixty years ago scientists agreed internationally on the spellings of certain technical terms, thereby rejecting spellings (such as chlorin and chlorid) that still abound in the OSPD, even though they disappeared from the better dictionaries long ago and have for the most part disappeared even from the dictionaries from which they were taken thirty years ago.

Some OSPD words are immediately suspect, such as et as in "I et my supper". You can find this in precisely one currently available college dictionary. You won't be able to check most suspect words in whatever dictionary you happen to own, since they're found in only one of the various editions consulted, often not the most recent printing. In other words the very lexicographers who originally included the suspect word often rejected it for a future printing. Skilless, outcavil, miseat, toadless, afars, ..., the list seems endless.

I certainly wouldn't recommend this book for schools, or any place where children might be present! I recognize that spelling and grammar are not as highly regarded as they used to be, but if a child's first exposure is to the spelling janty (unused for a couple of centuries and found only in the out-of-print 1973 dictionary) then the standard jaunty will always seem strange. And similarly for hundreds or thousands of other examples.

In fact, based on a partial survey, I would estimate that 5% of the OSPD words cannot be found in any current dictionary. This includes a number of short words that will appear on virtually every gameboard if you choose OSPD. Even two-letter words such as al, es, de (as in Charles de Gaulle), and a couple others are in the 5%.

On the other hand, once you use OSPD for a while you will be accustomed to seeing informal words, so the absence of perp will astonish you. The eminently useful word qi may well be familiar to you from real life and is probably in whatever current college dictionary you may own (and even for Scrabble you must have such a dictionary to check on words longer than 8 letters), but it's not in OSPD. This work was last revised about a decade ago and you might as well wait for an up-to-date version, though since it is unofficial, a new edition may be further away than the long-awaited 4th Unabridged.

The best that can be said for this book is that your regular college dictionary is unlikely to provide any basis for accepting vainest and plainer while rejecting mainer and mainest, or for drawing a line somewhere in a list such as stupider, rapider, vapider, hispider. The OSPD line may not always be sensible: e.g., exactly one of positiver and negativer is acceptable, and loudlier is one of five comparative -ly adverbs. So if this sort of issue is one you cannot resolve in any other way, you may want this book, especially if you agree to use only a standard dictionary for browsing.

I would nonetheless recommend using a standard college dictionary for Scrabble. The American Heritage High School Dictionary apparently contains everything in the College edition except for words that provoke offense, so it would be suitable for school use. If your friends and neighbors use some other dictionary for Scrabble, that should only increase the variety the game affords so long as you treat the matter sensibly.

I have enjoyed playing Scrabble for many years, but it can also get very frustrating when you get a rack of tiles that seem totally useless (like mostly consanants or mostly vowels). Since purchasing the Official Scrabble Player's Dictionary, I may still get frustrated at times, but now I have a much better resource for figuring out what I can do with seemingly useless tiles. (This dictionary has been especially useful when I want to place a word parallel to an existing word on the board and create one more more two- to three-letter extra words in the process.)

The font used in the dictionary is very easy to read. Words defined may be limited to between 2 and 8 letters, but at over 100,000 entries (including unusual words not defined anyplace else, like "brr"), this dictionary cannot be beat for playing Scrabble.

I spent a little more money to buy the hardback edition instead of the paperback one: it's much easier to inspect the pages of a dictionary when you don't have to fight the binding to keep the book open to one place.

You might need other useful resources when playing Scrabble, but none are as good as the Offical Scrabble Player's Dictionary. I give it a rating of 5 stars!

I don't know why Amazon is still pushing the 3rd edition 4 months after the release of the 4th edition, which is much superior! The 4th edition is available on Amazon as well, but you have to look elsewhere for the large print (Walmart online has it).

The Official Scrabble Players' Dictionary (OSPD) is flawed in many aspects, although it is used by American Scrabble Players. In particular, the standard of lexicography used to compile this dictionary is of doubtful orthodoxy. For instance, whereas the rules of the game expressly allows slang and archaic words, many of the same were omitted from the dictionary on the grounds of 'offensiveness', despite their being attested of old. What gives the publishers the right to censor the English language. On the other side of the coin, many words of questionable membership of the English language such as the 'aarghh' so proudly mentioned in the synopsis, were controvertibly included. The quality of the print, too, is none too good. In point of merit, the only aspect in which the OSPD is superior to the Official Scrabble Words (OSW), published by Chamber's, is that it includes definitions, albeit brief and sketchy, whereas the latter merely lists the words. Of course, this defect in is easily remedied by acquiring the Chamber's English Dictionary, which is the official dictionary used for Scrabble, and of which OSW is a derivative work listing all but very long words, and which, in any case, contains much more comprehensive definitions and other lexicographical aids than the OSPD. In short, Chamber's English Dictionary and OSW are contain a much more satisfactory choice of words than the OSPD, and I would caution the casual player against buying the Official Scrabble Players' Dictionary unless forced to do so, Chamber's being vastly superior.

This dictionary is an essential reference for any serious or even frequent Scrabble player.

The biggest advantage of this particular dictionary is that it standardizes what is acceptable when playing. Anyone who has ever played without an agreement on what constitutes the acceptable words knows that there are far too many dictionaries out there to easily agree upon one without an official one such as this.

That being said, it is not a dictionary that one can use to get definitions of words. Many times it will only define one usage of a word even when there are others as its purpose is to define what is acceptable in Scrabble play.

It is invaluable in terms of listing words that a regular Scrabble player needs to know such as two letter words, 'Q' words that don't require a 'U', etc.

One who is a frequent player will probably want to supplement this by getting a list of two letter words from the National Scrabble Association. That is definitely a good idea as it would be very difficult to be a very competent player without knowing all of those.

This dictionary does list countless words that a player may need in different situations such as qat, suq, zyzzyva, etc.

It certainly does need to be updated. There are lots of words that have become commonplace in recent years that are not in this such as spam, email, blog, latte, etc.

It is still the best out there for Scrabble players and is really an essential for playing the game.