Important Collins words

This page describes which Collins-only words are important for an NWL player to learn, and is part of our introduction to Collins (SOWPODS) in North America. For brevity, we will refer to the North American and International lexica, as NWL and CSW respectively.

How many more words are there, and what would I need to learn?

Technically, of course, you need to learn almost nothing, because there are just 52 words of 8 letters or fewer in NWL that are not in CSW, almost all of those are obscure, and there are none with fewer than 4 letters.

In practice, there are some useful basic words to start with. Because CSW contains essentially all the NWL words, you can continue to play the same game, and anything that was good in NWL remains good. Because the fundamentals of the game have not changed, the kinds of words that are the most useful to study in NWL are also the best to study in CSW. Thus the player who has studied the 2s, 3s, JQXZ words, some 4s, high probability bingos, etc., can continue to use the same methods for CSW.

So, what should you actually study? In the following, we present various useful lists and suggestions. In some cases we have presented just the most useful words, but you can see the full list by following the link in the Collins Cheat Sheet section below.

Two-letter words

As in NWL, by far the most useful words are the 2s. There are 20 more of these in CSW:

  1-10: CH DI EA EE FY GU IO JA KO KY
 11-20: NY OB OO OU ST UG UR YU ZE ZO

While 20 is not a large number, you probably will not remember them all straightaway. (Your author has played in the World Championships, and did not remember the 2s in one sitting.) They will become a natural part of the game over time.

Three-letter words

Following the 2s, there are 267 3s. The most useful 3s are:

  1-10: QIN EXO IDE OYE JAI ZEA ITA ENE AIA IWI
 11-20: AYU JOR URE WEX WOX WOF ZEL ZEX AUA NYE
 21-29: DZO AME GIO TEX ONY OBO WAI ZOL YEX
 ...

Obviously, like in NWL, you do not need to know 100% of the 3s before continuing. While words such as ZIZ may come in handy some day, it is likely that various 4s and bingos will come up first.

The next most useful words are the same as in NWL: short words with many vowels, high-scorers with J, Q, X and Z, some of the most useful 4s and 5s (words which are likely to be much better than other moves if you have those tiles, such as VIFDA), high probability bingos, dump-words such as 4s with 2 Is, and words with Q but not the Qu combination.

Vowel dumps

 2s: EA EE IO OO OU
 3s: AIA AUA AUE
 4s: EUOI HIOI EVOE HUIA VIAE IDEE OUPA UVAE ONIE ALOO ...
 5s: AIDOI AINEE AULOI BOOAI OUIJA ZOAEA ZOOEA
 6s: EUOUAE ZOAEAE ZOOEAE
 7s: ETAERIO EATERIE AIERIES OLEARIA EUGARIE DOULEIA EUOUAES DIANOIA MOINEAU AURELIA ...
 8s: ETAERIOS ERIONITE AEROTONE AEGIRINE DOUANIER NOTITIAE INAURATE AURELIAN AEGIRITE OLEARIAS ...

Short JQXZ words

 J: JA
    JAI JOR JOL JAP JIZ ...
    JOBE BENJ JUVE JEDI JAGA ...
    OUIJA JEWIE JIAOS JEUNE JOBED ...
 Q: QIN
    QINS WAQF FIQH QUOP QUEP ...
    TALAQ QORMA QUOIF QUOAD QUAIR ...
 X: EXO WEX WOX ZEX ...
    WEXE GREX FAIX DIXI LANX ...
    VITEX VIBEX XOANA JAXIE WEXED ...
 Z: ZE ZO
    ZEA ZEL ZEX DZO ZOL ...
    LAZO TREZ ZITE ZOOT ZATI ...
    ZOAEA ZOOEA AVIZE ZANTE EZINE ...

High-probability bingos

 7s: NOTAIRE OTARINE ETAERIO ALERION OARIEST OTARIES ROASTIE ORIGANE ENTRAIL RESIANT ...
 8s: TAILERON ANOESTRI ARSONITE NOTAIRES ROSINATE ETAERIOS DONARIES DOUANIER ALERIONS SOTERIAL ...

I and U dumps

 I: IWI
    DIVI DIXI FIFI FINI HIOI ISIT MIHI PIPI SIMI SIRI WILI
 U: UMU UTU
    HUHU KUKU KUTU KUZU PUKU PULU RURU SUSU UMUS UTUS WUDU ZULU

Q-not-followed-by-U words

       FIQH -s    QALAMDAN -s       TALAQ -s
      GUQIN -s      QASIDA -s     TSADDIQ -s
    INQILAB -s      QAWWAL -s   TSADDIQIM
   MUQADDAM -s         QIN -s     TZADDIQ -s
   QABALISM -s   QINGHAOSU -s   TZADDIQIM
   QABALIST -s    QINTARKA           WAQF -s
 QABALISTIC          QORMA -s      YAQONA -s
   QAIMAQAM -s    QWERTIES

Going Further

The basics above are easily enough for a good CSW game. But you may decide that you wish to go further.

A significant downside to going further is that it can be difficult to keep the two lexica separate. Although remembering which of the words you now know are “new” is not too bad (think back to the last dictionary update, if you have been playing that long), remembering a word and remembering which lexicon it is in are not the same thing, especially over a period of time. The CSW words may come back to haunt you in a NWL game a few months down the line!

But nevertheless, some people have high ratings at both NWL and CSW, and one can get to quite a high standard quite quickly.

Chosen correctly, it can be shown that learning the top 1% of the words when ordered by playability is equivalent to learning 25% of all the words. So, for the 2-8s, learning the top 300 from CSW is effectively learning one quarter of all the words newly allowed by that lexicon. This top 25% (or any other fraction) can be accessed by playability in the Collins Zyzzyva word study program.

Collins Cheat Sheet

We have incorporated the above into a Collins Cheat Sheet, that is designed to be used as a reference by players of CSW who started off using NWL [1], in settings that allow it.

It resembles the original Cheat Sheet by Mike Baron, and the NSA’s “Important Words to Raise Your Score” sheet that was given to new members, except that it concentrates on CSW words.

There is also a Collins Cheat Sheet Part 2, which contains a useful array of the hooks to CSW 2s, and the full set of CSW 4s.

[1] In fact, the sheet can also be used by native CSW players who wish to play NWL to know which words are *not* allowed, although it is not complete in this sense.

More Resources

For further resources regarding the CSW words, including word study software such as Zyzzyva, see the Collins links page.

Please direct comments about this page to its author, Nick Ball.