NASPAWiki - User contributions [en]

Collins links

2026-03-02T20:11:19Z

CM000457: Update Collins cheat sheet from CSW21 to CSW24

This page provides links related Collins, and is part of our introduction to [[SOWPODS|Collins (SOWPODS) in North America]]. For brevity, we will refer to the North American and International lexica as NWL and CSW respectively.

Since once can find much material online by web-searching "Scrabble", "Collins", etc., we limit the selection to the most useful links for the player new to CSW.

These links are up-to-date for CSW24 unless otherwise noted.

== General ==

<table style="width: 100%; text-align: left;" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://playscrabble.com">Scrabble</a></td>
<td> General worldwide site for Scrabble </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.scrabbleplayers.org">NASPA</a></td>
<td> North American Scrabble Players Association </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.wespa.org">WESPA</a></td>
<td> World English-Language Scrabble Players Association </td>
</tr>
</table>

== Books & Playing Guides ==

Some of these are not up-to-date for the current CSW, but the effect is minor

<table style="width: 100%; text-align: left;" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.breakingthegame.net/csw">Breaking the Game</a></td>
<td> Cutting-edge Scrabble strategy, puzzles, etc., from Kenji Matsumoto </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.breakingthegame.net/word">Word</a></td>
<td> His book on basic Scrabble strategy, CSW edition </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.breakingthegame.net/scrabblesolved">Scrabble Solved</a></td>
<td> Sequel on advanced strategy, CSW edition </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/101-Ways-Win-SCRABBLE-C2-AE-success-dp-0008320195/dp/0008320195/ref=dp_ob_title_bk">101 Ways to Win at Scrabble</a></td>
<td> Recent British book by Barry Grossman </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/SCRABBLETM-Secrets-seriously-improve-Collins-dp-0008591237/dp/0008591237/ref=dp_ob_title_bk">Scrabble Secrets</a></td>
<td> Another one, by 1993 world champion Mark Nyman </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.matthewjoconnor.com/">How to Play Scrabble Like Matthew O'Connor</a></td>
<td> Advanced Collins strategy </td>
</tr>
</table>

== Software ==

<table style="width: 100%; text-align: left;" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.quackle.org">Quackle</a></td>
<td> Widely used software that can be configured for Scrabble </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.scrabbleplayers.org/w/NASPA_Zyzzyva:_The_Last_Word_in_Word_Study">NASPA Zyzzyva</a></td>
<td> Widely used word study software</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://scrabble.collinsdictionary.com/tools/">Collins Zyzzyva</a></td>
<td> Version that does not contain NWL, but has more comprehensive definitions for CSW, spanning 2-15 letters </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.woogles.io">Woogles</a></td>
<td> Online play, including CSW, human & computer players, live games, chat, tournaments, etc. </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.aerolith.org">Aerolith</a></td>
<td> Online game to practice anagramming, in NWL or CSW </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.poslarchive.com/math/software/tsh">Tournament Shell</a></td>
<td> Tournament directing software that can do NWL or CSW </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.codehappy.net/elise">Elise</a></td>
<td> Another word game playing software </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.wolfberg.net/what">WHAT</a></td>
<td> Another word finding software </td>
</tr>
</table>

== Tournaments & Ratings ==

<table style="width: 100%; text-align: left;" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.scrabbleplayers.org/tourneys/calendar.html">NASPA tournament calendar</a></td>
<td> Official calendar of rated NASPA tournaments, both NWL and CSW </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.cross-tables.com">Cross-Tables</a></td>
<td> Tournaments, ratings, results, etc. Front page has good visual list with obvious icons showing that a tournament is NWL or CSW </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.scrabbleplayers.org/w/SOWPODS_rating_system">NASPA SOWPODS ratings</a></td>
<td> Description of the CSW ratings, with results </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.wespa.org/aardvark/html/rankings/full_rankings.html">WESPA ratings</a></td>
<td> World ratings </td>
</tr>
</table>

== Word Lists ==

<table style="width: 100%; text-align: left;" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tr>
<td> [[Media:Collins_Cheat_Sheet_CSW24_Part_1_of_2.pdf|Collins Cheat Sheet Part 1]]</td>
<td> Useful CSW-only words for handy reference: 2s, 3s, high probability bingos, etc. </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> [[Media:Collins_Cheat_Sheet_CSW24_Part_2_of_2.pdf|Collins Cheat Sheet Part 2]]</td>
<td> More useful words: hooks of 2s, all the 4s </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Official-SCRABBLETM-Words-official-comprehensive-dp-0008660727/dp/0008660727/ref=dp_ob_title_bk">Collins Official Scrabble Words</a></td>
<td> Official CSW24 book </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0008660778/ref=sspa_dk_hqp_detail_aax_0?psc=1&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9ocXBfc2hhcmVk">Collins Ultimate Scrabble Dictionary and Wordlist</a></td>
<td> 2-15 letter words, with definitions for the 2s-9s </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.absp.org.uk">ABSP words by category</a></td>
<td> Extensive sets of lists by many definition-based categories (languages, food, etc.) Select the "Words" dropdown menu from the website's top menu bar. </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/winningwords">Winning Words</a></td>
<td> Set of books with useful categories by part of speech, etc. </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.normanwei.com/">Anagram Cartoons Book</a></td>
<td> Anagrams + cartoons valid in NWL and CSW </td>
</tr>
</table>

== YouTube ==

<table style="width: 100%; text-align: left;" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@NASPAScrabble">NASPA Scrabble</a></td>
<td> NWL and CSW tournament games with commentary </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@letsplayscrabbledotcom">Let's Play Scrabble</a></td>
<td> Similar to NASPA, with other tournaments </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@wanderer15">Will Anderson</a></td>
<td> Wide variety of Scrabble content from Will Anderson, NWL and CSW </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@dweebovision">Dweebovision</a></td>
<td> Videos of CSW games with clear and insightful commentary from David Webb </td>
</tr>
</table>

== Etc. ==

This list is not complete, for example, there is a lot of other online video content like twitch.tv.

<table style="width: 100%; text-align: left;" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/217094718419713">Collins Scrabble Players</a></td>
<td> Online pro-CSW in North America community </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.word-buff.com">Word Buff</a></td>
<td> Lots of word-related material </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://learningscrabblewords.blogspot.com/2017/05/on-switch-hitting.html">Learning Scrabble Words</a></td>
<td> Blog entry on learning Collins words </td>
</tr>
</table>

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

Try it

2026-03-02T20:07:26Z

CM000457: Update to point to CSW24 cheat sheet from CSW21

This page describes ways to try out Collins Scrabble, and is part of our introduction to [[SOWPODS|Collins (SOWPODS) in North America]]. For brevity, we will refer to the North American and International lexica as NWL and CSW respectively.

There are several possibilities:

== Quackle ==

[http://www.quackle.org Quackle] is computer software that will play the CSW lexicon. Go to the '''Settings''' tab and set it to use the latest CSW lexicon. You can also highlight the CSW words as they are played and in the history/choices by going to the preferences settings under the main menu. The words when played will be colored, and when written on screen will be appended by the # (octothorp) sign. Quackle calls CSW the British words.

== Zyzzyva ==

Zyzzyva is a word study tool that allows many forms of CSW study. These include searching words by many criteria, setting up quizzes such as anagrams, and the card box study system to aid memory.

Two versions are widely used:

* [[Zyzzyva|NASPA Zyzzyva]] allows lists to be constructed in either NWL or CSW, and one can select words that are CSW-only. This is how several of the lists in this wiki and the Collins Cheat sheet (see below) were, in part, constructed. Currently it does not have definitions for CSW words, only the NWL ones, and the playability values are not useful.

* [https://scrabble.collinsdictionary.com/tools/ Collins Zyzzyva] is available worldwide for download. It includes the CSW lexicon but not the NWL lexicon, so it is less useful for a NWL player moving to CSW. However, it has a comprehensive and authoritative set of definitions for all words from 2-15 letters, coming largely from the same work that provided the [https://www.absp.org.uk word lists] at the Association of British Scrabble Players website mentioned earlier in this wiki.

== Online ==

* [http://www.woogles.io Woogles] has a large number of players who play the CSW lexicon, as well as NWL players.
* The CSW dictionary is available for [https://www.facebook.com/ScrabbleGO Scrabble GO], e.g., on the phone.
* The popular [https://www.zynga.com/games/words-friends Words with Friends] does not use CSW or NWL.

== At a club ==

This could be as simple as two club members agreeing to play a game to CSW. However, many people before have found that allowing a 'cheat sheet' of, for example, the 2s and 3s, the [[Media:Collins_Cheat_Sheet_CSW24_Part_1_of_2.pdf|Collins Cheat Sheet]] and [[Media:Collins_Cheat_Sheet_CSW24_Part_2_of_2.pdf|Part 2]] from this wiki, or other cheat sheets, works well. You could also use a more relaxed challenge rule, such as 5-10 points, no penalty for challenging, or even void challenge. Some clubs have held evenings where people play CSW, and others have regular CSW players. Unfortunately there is no comprehensive listing of which clubs have CSW players.

== At a tournament ==

North American tournaments that offer a CSW division are listed on the [http://www.scrabbleplayers.org/tourneys/calendar.html NASPA tournament calendar], and at [http://www.cross-tables.com cross-tables]. CSW divisions tend to be smaller than NWL ones and often have highly rated players, but the easier challenge rule mitigates the difference somewhat. A CSW division can be rated when it has 4 or more people, and 2 or more are NASPA rated.

If you are a director, it is possible to add a CSW division to an existing tournament, since tournament directing software can incorporate the NASPA CSW ratings.

== More ==

For links to more CSW resources, e.g., books, see the [[Collins links|links page]].

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

File:Collins Cheat Sheet CSW24 Part 2 of 2.pdf

2026-03-02T20:05:04Z

CM000457: Updated Collins cheat sheet for CSW24, part 2 of 2

Updated Collins cheat sheet for CSW24, part 2 of 2

File:Collins Cheat Sheet CSW24 Part 1 of 2.pdf

2026-03-02T20:04:31Z

CM000457: Updated Collins cheat sheet for CSW24, part 1 of 2

Updated Collins cheat sheet for CSW24, part 1 of 2

Collins pros and cons

2026-03-02T18:56:58Z

CM000457: Add CSW crowdsourcing project link under Better Zyzzyva Definitions

This page discusses the pros and cons to playing using the Collins lexicon when coming from a background of playing NWL, and is part of our introduction to [[SOWPODS|Collins (SOWPODS) in North America]]. For brevity, we will refer to the North American and International lexica as NWL and CSW respectively.

While the cons are certainly not intended to discourage anyone from playing CSW, it is useful to be aware of them before committing to learning and playing the CSW game.

The items here are largely given from the North American perspective, as this is the dominant community in English language Scrabble that does not use Collins already.

Some of the "pro" arguments given below are later matched by their converses in the "cons" section that comes after, but others may not be given explicitly in both directions in the two sections.

The list given here is not definitive and ultimately each player will form their own viewpoint.

== What Are the Upsides to Collins? ==

Many of these arguments are well-rehearsed, having been advocated by some players since the 1980s, and after the first World Championships in 1991, played then and ever since to SOWPODS and later CSW.

The upsides of Collins for the individual can blend into general arguments for the community as a whole to play to one English language word list instead of two, but here we focus on the pro- arguments at an individual level.

; '''Ability to play with the world community'''
: To most of the tournament Scrabble playing world, NWL is English Scrabble with about 25% of the words disallowed, in no memorizable pattern. It is thus inaccessible to most, and consequently played little. Collins opens up the world English language Scrabble community to the NWL player that would otherwise largely be unseen. This is especially relevant now that online play has become more prevalent after COVID-19.

; '''More words allowed'''
: Many words in NWL that players are surprised are invalid are allowed in Collins. Greater inclusivity gives better lexicon consistency in some areas, such as -INGS and -ISE vs. -IZE words, although the overall lexicon integrity is not necessarily any better, and is in some ways worse because more obsolete words are present.

; '''More choices of plays'''
: Similar to more words, a typical Collins move has more play choices. Depending on personal preference between play-finding and strategically selecting between found play choices, this may be good or bad, but most players prefer things such as the bingo or the Q on their rack to be playable than not.

; '''Better Zyzzyva definitions'''
: The Collins definitions in Zyzzyva benefit from the extensive work over many years of former UK dictionary committee member David Sutton, and are comprehensive and of high quality at all lengths from 2 to 15 letters. CSW24 has unfortunately regressed in this regard compared to CSW21, but a community project [https://github.com/jvc56/CrowdsourcedDefs CSW Crowdsourcing] provides an improved list that can be installed as per their instructions by swapping out the appropriate Zyzzyva lexicon file.

; '''Less punishing challenge rule'''
: An unsuccessful challenge generally results in a points penalty, typically 5 or 10 points per word or per move, and puts less of a premium on rote dictionary memorization, including of the inconsistencies in the dictionary that both lexica contain, and an arbitrary-seeming boundary between what is valid and what is not resulting from the dictionaries that the lexica are based on being abridged. (The boundary is not actually arbitrary: dictionaries have inclusion criteria based upon citations, etc., but from the player point of view it will often appear to be.)

; '''More global English'''
: English is a global language, and more of its variations are reflected in Collins, not so much by the number of countries the source dictionaries are from (only the UK is added), but from the overall greater inclusivity.

; '''No variation between organizations'''
: Depending upon the sanctioning organization in North American tournaments, the word list being used might be NWL23, WOW24, or NSWL23 for school Scrabble. Each contains additions or deletions with respect to the others. CSW24 has no such variants, and the same list is used for all CSW tournament Scrabble play.

== What Are the Downsides to Collins? ==

As with pros, we concentrate on points pertinent to the individual player, as opposed to the community as a whole.

; '''It is difficult to play well in both lexica'''
: While one does not have to study many words to play CSW quite well, it could become difficult when playing NWL again to remember which words are only acceptable in CSW. This difficulty of remembering can inhibit the CSW-er's play in NWL because any word that is CSW-only is likely to be challenged off by an NWL player who is not familiar with it. Having a word challenged off is one of the worst things that can happen in a game with respect to optimal play, worse than playing no move at all because your opponent has seen some or all of your letters. While CSW contains more obscure words, simply using the maxim "if it's weird, it's Collins" will lead to many mistakes.

; '''Smaller North American community'''
: While the number of CSW players is growing, the North American community contains far more NWL players, and in many clubs there are no CSW players at all. In tournaments, the fields are often small, with uncertainty in some about whether an event will happen because a minimum quorum of 4 players is needed for rating. If the event does happen, you will more likely encounter the same players frequently, or have to play them multiple times. The CSW field is also dominated by highly rated players who are often motivated to play Collins because of the opportunities for international play. And because the fields are small, usually all players are in a single division. While having many top players may be good or bad depending on your point of view, currently, if you are not a top player, you will likely lose a lot of the games that you play in a CSW tournament.

; '''The challenge rule may be less challenging'''
: Some players like the double-challenge rule and feel that it is an essential part of the game. While there is still a penalty for an incorrect challenge, and there is no reason a CSW game cannot remain double-challenge given the rules, 5 or 10 points per word is a more common de facto standard. This is enough to make you at least pause before challenging, so the aspect of the game embodied by double challenge is not completely lost, but it is not the same decision making process.

; '''CSW is not North American English'''
: CSW reflects a more global usage of the language and as such is not just reflective of the language in the U.S. and Canada. However, this is also true for all of the countries that use CSW when it is considered in relation to their usage of English.

; '''There are [[Obscure Collins words|obscure words in Collins]]'''
: While NWL contains obsolete and archaic words, the CSW contains more of them.

; '''The existence of CSW play splits the U.S. SCRABBLE scene'''
: While the large majority of North American players are NWL, a significant number of top players either play only NWL or only CSW. This divides the top divisions of tournaments and lowers the prestige of winning any particular one. Because the Scrabble community is relatively small, fragmentation in general is bad. There are, however, many other ways in which the scene is fragmented. For example, we have School play with the School lexicon; two other tournament sanctioning organizations: WGPO (NWL and CSW) and CoCo (CSW); unsanctioned, recreational club, competitive club and tournament play; online and in-person play; and a long list of variant rules that people like to try. It is part of the strength of the basic game that its many variations appeal to different people. Officially sanctioned CSW play lets us keep players who prefer it to NWL play in the fold, and encourages immigrants and tourists to join our community.

; '''There is no single official Collins dictionary with all the definitions'''
: The published Collins English dictionary does not contain all the words in CSW. This is because some words are only in the North American dictionaries, and some are in the Collins language corpus but not the printed dictionary. However, keep in mind that the U.S. lexicon is also spread over more than one dictionary (5, in fact), and that a companion volume to CSW, the Collins Official SCRABBLE Dictionary, contains short definitions for the 2-9 letter words, in a similar manner to OSPD. The [[Collins links|Collins edition]] of the Zyzzyva word study program likewise contains short definitions, for all word lengths up to 15 letters. Nevertheless, the lack of a coherent published dictionary-standard set of definitions is a notable downside to an official lexicon for a word game.

; '''Existing study may have to be redone'''
: A player who has spent a lot of time becoming expert in NWL is understandably reluctant to undertake the effort again merely to become proficient in another version of a game at which they already were. This is why it is important to note that a player expert in NWL can do well in CSW with a relatively much lower level of study. But there is still work for them to do, and, depending on the study method, it can add up. For example, using "stems" of 6 or 7 letters combined with mnemonics to know which combinations make a bingo will require significant revision because extra letters make bingos (see, e.g., [http://www.math.toronto.edu/jjchew/scrabble/anamonics-dd.html here]).

; '''A Collins player can take advantage of a NWL player'''
: Although as mentioned a NWL player can do well in CSW by learning relatively few words compared to what they learned for NWL, this does mean that an expert Collins player can use their knowledge of the lexicon to take advantage, by, for example, deliberately playing obscure words they know to be CSW only, or setting up and using CSW-only hooks. (For example, your author once played WHOW, then later hooked it to EWHOW for a lot of points, albeit in a rated tournament against another expert player.) This taking advantage is mitigated somewhat by the challenge rule, but penalties for challenging can still add up, and with new hooks the opponent may not even know there is a possible play.

; '''Differing strategy'''
: The relative importance of different aspects of strategy, such as offense versus defense, may change, meaning that those players particularly skilled at one may be disadvantaged. However, these aspects are not publicly well quantified. For more details, see [[How Collins differs]].

<br>Please direct comments about this page to its author, [[Nick Ball]].

Collins updates

2026-01-22T22:22:00Z

CM000457: Fix broken link to CSW24 initiation kit: WESPA -> Irish Scrabble

This page discusses how often changes are published to the Collins lexicon, and is part of our introduction to [[SOWPODS|Collins (SOWPODS) in North America]]. For brevity, we will refer to the North American and International lexica as NWL and CSW respectively.

== How Often is the Collins Word List Updated? ==

Both the NWL and CSW word lists are updated every few years. There has not been a fixed frequency of updates.

At first glance, this may seem unexpected. After all, if CSW includes lists from both the British and American dictionaries, shouldn’t it be updated twice as often? However, part of the motivation and criteria of publishing CSW is that it specifically includes the NWL. As in North America, the worldwide community wants the frequency of updates to result in a list that is reasonably up-to-date, without constant changes. Therefore, so far, the frequency of updates has been similar.

The current NWL was last updated in 2023. Recent previous editions were published in 2020, 2018, 2016, 2014, 2006, and 1998. CSW was updated in 2007, 2012, 2015, 2019, and 2021. The current CSW was updated in 2024.

Click [https://www.irishscrabble.org/Downloads/Learning/CSW24/WESPA_Initiation_Kit_2024.pdf here] for a list of changes in CSW24.

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

Collins links

2025-08-22T18:15:20Z

CM000457: Update to CSW24, update links

This page provides links related Collins, and is part of our introduction to [[SOWPODS|Collins (SOWPODS) in North America]]. For brevity, we will refer to the North American and International lexica as NWL and CSW respectively.

Since once can find much material online by web-searching "Scrabble", "Collins", etc., we limit the selection to the most useful links for the player new to CSW.

These links are up-to-date for CSW24 unless otherwise noted.

== General ==

<table style="width: 100%; text-align: left;" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://playscrabble.com">Scrabble</a></td>
<td> General worldwide site for Scrabble </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.scrabbleplayers.org">NASPA</a></td>
<td> North American Scrabble Players Association </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.wespa.org">WESPA</a></td>
<td> World English-Language Scrabble Players Association </td>
</tr>
</table>

== Books & Playing Guides ==

Some of these are not up-to-date for the current CSW, but the effect is minor

<table style="width: 100%; text-align: left;" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.breakingthegame.net/csw">Breaking the Game</a></td>
<td> Cutting-edge Scrabble strategy, puzzles, etc., from Kenji Matsumoto </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.breakingthegame.net/word">Word</a></td>
<td> His book on basic Scrabble strategy, CSW edition </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.breakingthegame.net/scrabblesolved">Scrabble Solved</a></td>
<td> Sequel on advanced strategy, CSW edition </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/101-Ways-Win-SCRABBLE-C2-AE-success-dp-0008320195/dp/0008320195/ref=dp_ob_title_bk">101 Ways to Win at Scrabble</a></td>
<td> Recent British book by Barry Grossman </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/SCRABBLETM-Secrets-seriously-improve-Collins-dp-0008591237/dp/0008591237/ref=dp_ob_title_bk">Scrabble Secrets</a></td>
<td> Another one, by 1993 world champion Mark Nyman </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.matthewjoconnor.com/">How to Play Scrabble Like Matthew O'Connor</a></td>
<td> Advanced Collins strategy </td>
</tr>
</table>

== Software ==

<table style="width: 100%; text-align: left;" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.quackle.org">Quackle</a></td>
<td> Widely used software that can be configured for Scrabble </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.scrabbleplayers.org/w/NASPA_Zyzzyva:_The_Last_Word_in_Word_Study">NASPA Zyzzyva</a></td>
<td> Widely used word study software</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://scrabble.collinsdictionary.com/tools/">Collins Zyzzyva</a></td>
<td> Version that does not contain NWL, but has more comprehensive definitions for CSW, spanning 2-15 letters </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.woogles.io">Woogles</a></td>
<td> Online play, including CSW, human & computer players, live games, chat, tournaments, etc. </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.aerolith.org">Aerolith</a></td>
<td> Online game to practice anagramming, in NWL or CSW </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.poslarchive.com/math/software/tsh">Tournament Shell</a></td>
<td> Tournament directing software that can do NWL or CSW </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.codehappy.net/elise">Elise</a></td>
<td> Another word game playing software </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.wolfberg.net/what">WHAT</a></td>
<td> Another word finding software </td>
</tr>
</table>

== Tournaments & Ratings ==

<table style="width: 100%; text-align: left;" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.scrabbleplayers.org/tourneys/calendar.html">NASPA tournament calendar</a></td>
<td> Official calendar of rated NASPA tournaments, both NWL and CSW </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.cross-tables.com">Cross-Tables</a></td>
<td> Tournaments, ratings, results, etc. Front page has good visual list with obvious icons showing that a tournament is NWL or CSW </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.scrabbleplayers.org/w/SOWPODS_rating_system">NASPA SOWPODS ratings</a></td>
<td> Description of the CSW ratings, with results </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.wespa.org/aardvark/html/rankings/full_rankings.html">WESPA ratings</a></td>
<td> World ratings </td>
</tr>
</table>

== Word Lists ==

'''NOTE:''' The two Collins cheat sheets need updating from CSW21 to CSW24 but are otherwise valid

<table style="width: 100%; text-align: left;" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tr>
<td> [[Media:Collins_Cheat_Sheet_CSW21_Part_1_of_2.pdf|Collins Cheat Sheet Part 1]]</td>
<td> Useful CSW-only words for handy reference: 2s, 3s, high probability bingos, the 52 2-8 letter words only in NWL, etc. </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> [[Media:Collins_Cheat_Sheet_CSW21_Part_2_of_2.pdf|Collins Cheat Sheet Part 2]]</td>
<td> More useful words: hooks of 2s, all the 4s </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Official-SCRABBLETM-Words-official-comprehensive-dp-0008660727/dp/0008660727/ref=dp_ob_title_bk">Collins Official Scrabble Words</a></td>
<td> Official CSW24 book </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0008660778/ref=sspa_dk_hqp_detail_aax_0?psc=1&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9ocXBfc2hhcmVk">Collins Ultimate Scrabble Dictionary and Wordlist</a></td>
<td> 2-15 letter words, with definitions for the 2s-9s </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.absp.org.uk">ABSP words by category</a></td>
<td> Extensive sets of lists by many definition-based categories (languages, food, etc.) Select the "Words" dropdown menu from the website's top menu bar. </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/winningwords">Winning Words</a></td>
<td> Set of books with useful categories by part of speech, etc. </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.normanwei.com/">Anagram Cartoons Book</a></td>
<td> Anagrams + cartoons valid in NWL and CSW </td>
</tr>
</table>

== YouTube ==

<table style="width: 100%; text-align: left;" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@NASPAScrabble">NASPA Scrabble</a></td>
<td> NWL and CSW tournament games with commentary </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@letsplayscrabbledotcom">Let's Play Scrabble</a></td>
<td> Similar to NASPA, with other tournaments </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@wanderer15">Will Anderson</a></td>
<td> Wide variety of Scrabble content from Will Anderson, NWL and CSW </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@dweebovision">Dweebovision</a></td>
<td> Videos of CSW games with clear and insightful commentary from David Webb </td>
</tr>
</table>

== Etc. ==

This list is far from complete, for example, there is a lot of other online video content like twitch.tv.

<table style="width: 100%; text-align: left;" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/217094718419713">Collins Scrabble Players</a></td>
<td> Online pro-CSW in North America community </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.word-buff.com">Word Buff</a></td>
<td> Lots of word-related material </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://learningscrabblewords.blogspot.com/2017/05/on-switch-hitting.html">Learning Scrabble Words</a></td>
<td> Blog entry on learning Collins words </td>
</tr>
</table>

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

Try it

2025-08-22T18:11:18Z

CM000457: Update links

This page describes ways to try out Collins Scrabble, and is part of our introduction to [[SOWPODS|Collins (SOWPODS) in North America]]. For brevity, we will refer to the North American and International lexica as NWL and CSW respectively.

There are several possibilities:

== Quackle ==

[http://www.quackle.org Quackle] is computer software that will play the CSW lexicon. Go to the '''Settings''' tab and set it to use the latest CSW lexicon. You can also highlight the CSW words as they are played and in the history/choices by going to the preferences settings under the main menu. The words when played will be colored, and when written on screen will be appended by the # (octothorp) sign. Quackle calls CSW the British words.

== Zyzzyva ==

Zyzzyva is a word study tool that allows many forms of CSW study. These include searching words by many criteria, setting up quizzes such as anagrams, and the card box study system to aid memory.

Two versions are widely used:

* [[Zyzzyva|NASPA Zyzzyva]] allows lists to be constructed in either NWL or CSW, and one can select words that are CSW-only. This is how several of the lists in this wiki and the Collins Cheat sheet (see below) were, in part, constructed. Currently it does not have definitions for CSW words, only the NWL ones, and the playability values are not useful.

* [https://scrabble.collinsdictionary.com/tools/ Collins Zyzzyva] is available worldwide for download. It includes the CSW lexicon but not the NWL lexicon, so it is less useful for a NWL player moving to CSW. However, it has a comprehensive and authoritative set of definitions for all words from 2-15 letters, coming largely from the same work that provided the [https://www.absp.org.uk word lists] at the Association of British Scrabble Players website mentioned earlier in this wiki.

== Online ==

* [http://www.woogles.io Woogles] has a large number of players who play the CSW lexicon, as well as NWL players.
* The CSW dictionary is available for [https://www.facebook.com/ScrabbleGO Scrabble GO], e.g., on the phone.
* The popular [https://www.zynga.com/games/words-friends Words with Friends] does not use CSW or NWL.

== At a club ==

This could be as simple as two club members agreeing to play a game to CSW. However, many people before have found that allowing a 'cheat sheet' of, for example, the 2s and 3s, the [[Media:Collins_Cheat_Sheet_CSW21_Part_1_of_2.pdf|Collins Cheat Sheet]] and [[Media:Collins_Cheat_Sheet_CSW21_Part_2_of_2.pdf|Part 2]] from this wiki, or other cheat sheets, works well. You could also use a more relaxed challenge rule, such as 5-10 points, no penalty for challenging, or even void challenge. Some clubs have held evenings where people play CSW, and others have regular CSW players. Unfortunately there is no comprehensive listing of which clubs have CSW players.

== At a tournament ==

North American tournaments that offer a CSW division are listed on the [http://www.scrabbleplayers.org/tourneys/calendar.html NASPA tournament calendar], and at [http://www.cross-tables.com cross-tables]. CSW divisions tend to be smaller than NWL ones and often have highly rated players, but the easier challenge rule mitigates the difference somewhat. A CSW division can be rated when it has 4 or more people, and 2 or more are NASPA rated.

If you are a director, it is possible to add a CSW division to an existing tournament, since tournament directing software can incorporate the NASPA CSW ratings.

== More ==

For links to more CSW resources, e.g., books, see the [[Collins links|links page]].

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

Collins tournaments and ratings

2025-08-22T18:10:14Z

CM000457: Change Berkeley to SF Bay Area

This page discusses North American tournaments and ratings using the Collins lexicon, and is part of our introduction to [[SOWPODS|Collins (SOWPODS) in North America]]. For brevity, we will refer to the North American and International lexica as NWL and CSW respectively.

== Collins Tournaments ==

While there have been occasional tournaments played to the international lexicon in the US since the 1990s (the ’93 World Championships in New York, for example, because the Worlds have always used the international lexicon), and occasional others such as Wisconsin Dells, Toronto, and Texas, it was in 2010 that the number of CSW tournaments started to increase significantly. This was in large part due to NASPA’s decision to allow CSW to be rated, which has given the impetus to several organizers to add CSW divisions, or create new tournaments to meet demand.

It remains to be seen how much these numbers will continue to increase, and what the long-term future of the CSW scene will be, but the possibility of being able to play CSW exclusively, if one would like to, is now workable.

Also of note is that there are a significant number of prominent international tournaments with quite substantial sponsorship and prizes, several of which are well into the $1000s, and some over $10,000. These are listed at the [http://www.wespa.org WESPA] website.

The most concise and visual overview of current CSW tournaments can be found at [http://www.cross-tables.com cross-tables], where upcoming tournaments are listed, and those offering CSW divisions have a yellow CSW icon next to them. This list is not guaranteed complete, for example, monthly San Francisco Bay Area tournaments do not normally post their entrants list, so the CSW icon does not show up. CSW divisions are usually conditional on 4 players entering the division, and there is not normally more than one division.

The NASPA website lists all upcoming rated tournaments on the [{{SERVER}}/tourneys/calendar.html calendar of future events]. Clicking any event brings up the expanded listing, and doing a find-in-page for "Collins" or "CSW" can locate tournaments that may not have been shown in cross-tables.

For information on directing a CSW tournament, or adding a CSW division to a tournament, see the page on [[Directing SOWPODS tournaments]].

== Collins Ratings ==

Tournaments played to CSW in North America and sanctioned by NASPA are rated under the <a href="http://www.scrabbleplayers.org/w/SOWPODS_rating_system">NASPA SOWPODS</a> rating system. Thus:

'''Playing a CSW tournament has no effect on your regular NASPA rating'''

As well as the national systems, CSW tournaments in North America are eligible to be rated by the <a href="http://www.wespa.org">World English Scrabble Players Association (WESPA)</a>, the governing body of the English game worldwide, under their international system. In other words, if you play a CSW tournament, you can get a world ranking. The WESPA system uses a different formula to NASPA, but the resulting distribution of ratings is broadly similar.

The <a href="http://www.scrabbleplayers.org/w/SOWPODS_rating_system">NASPA SOWPODS</a> system is described further on this wiki, but is essentially identical to the regular rating. Existing tournament software such as [http://www.math.utoronto.ca/jjchew/software/tsh tsh] and [http://director.victoriascrabble.org Director!] can handle this. Hence, if you are already directing a tournament, adding a CSW division to it is straightforward.

Those with a regular NASPA rating from NWL start with that same rating under NASPA SOWPODS, but with zero games.

Several players are rated under two or more of the rating systems, and it is possible to compare their ratings in different systems.

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

Collins pros and cons

2025-08-22T18:09:00Z

CM000457: Update to CSW24, some other text edits

This page discusses the pros and cons to playing using the Collins lexicon when coming from a background of playing NWL, and is part of our introduction to [[SOWPODS|Collins (SOWPODS) in North America]]. For brevity, we will refer to the North American and International lexica as NWL and CSW respectively.

While the cons are certainly not intended to discourage anyone from playing CSW, it is useful to be aware of them before committing to learning and playing the CSW game.

The items here are largely given from the North American perspective, as this is the dominant community in English language Scrabble that does not use Collins already.

Some of the "pro" arguments given below are later matched by their converses in the "cons" section that comes after, but others may not be given explicitly in both directions in the two sections.

The list given here is not definitive and ultimately each player will form their own viewpoint.

== What Are the Upsides to Collins? ==

Many of these arguments are well-rehearsed, having been advocated by some players since the 1980s, and after the first World Championships in 1991, played then and ever since to SOWPODS and later CSW.

The upsides of Collins for the individual can blend into general arguments for the community as a whole to play to one English language word list instead of two, but here we focus on the pro- arguments at an individual level.

; '''Ability to play with the world community'''
: To most of the tournament Scrabble playing world, NWL is English Scrabble with about 25% of the words disallowed, in no memorizable pattern. It is thus inaccessible to most, and consequently played little. Collins opens up the world English language Scrabble community to the NWL player that would otherwise largely be unseen. This is especially relevant now that online play has become more prevalent after COVID-19.

; '''More words allowed'''
: Many words in NWL that players are surprised are invalid are allowed in Collins. Greater inclusivity gives better lexicon consistency in some areas, such as -INGS and -ISE vs. -IZE words, although the overall lexicon integrity is not necessarily any better, and is in some ways worse because more obsolete words are present.

; '''More choices of plays'''
: Similar to more words, a typical Collins move has more play choices. Depending on personal preference between play-finding and strategically selecting between found play choices, this may be good or bad, but most players prefer things such as the bingo or the Q on their rack to be playable than not.

; '''Better Zyzzyva definitions'''
: The Collins definitions in Zyzzyva benefit from the extensive work over many years of former UK dictionary committee member David Sutton, and are comprehensive and of high quality at all lengths from 2 to 15 letters. CSW24 has unfortunately regressed in this regard, but the CSW21 lexicon remains high quality and can be supplemented with the new words if desired via the custom lexicon feature.

; '''Less punishing challenge rule'''
: An unsuccessful challenge generally results in a points penalty, typically 5 or 10 points per word or per move, and puts less of a premium on rote dictionary memorization, including of the inconsistencies in the dictionary that both lexica contain, and an arbitrary-seeming boundary between what is valid and what is not resulting from the dictionaries that the lexica are based on being abridged. (The boundary is not actually arbitrary: dictionaries have inclusion criteria based upon citations, etc., but from the player point of view it will often appear to be.)

; '''More global English'''
: English is a global language, and more of its variations are reflected in Collins, not so much by the number of countries the source dictionaries are from (only the UK is added), but from the overall greater inclusivity.

; '''No variation between organizations'''
: Depending upon the sanctioning organization in North American tournaments, the word list being used might be NWL23, WOW24, or NSWL23 for school Scrabble. Each contains additions or deletions with respect to the others. CSW24 has no such variants, and the same list is used for all CSW tournament Scrabble play.

== What Are the Downsides to Collins? ==

As with pros, we concentrate on points pertinent to the individual player, as opposed to the community as a whole.

; '''It is difficult to play well in both lexica'''
: While one does not have to study many words to play CSW quite well, it could become difficult when playing NWL again to remember which words are only acceptable in CSW. This difficulty of remembering can inhibit the CSW-er's play in NWL because any word that is CSW-only is likely to be challenged off by an NWL player who is not familiar with it. Having a word challenged off is one of the worst things that can happen in a game with respect to optimal play, worse than playing no move at all because your opponent has seen some or all of your letters. While CSW contains more obscure words, simply using the maxim "if it's weird, it's Collins" will lead to many mistakes.

; '''Smaller North American community'''
: While the number of CSW players is growing, the North American community contains far more NWL players, and in many clubs there are no CSW players at all. In tournaments, the fields are often small, with uncertainty in some about whether an event will happen because a minimum quorum of 4 players is needed for rating. If the event does happen, you will more likely encounter the same players frequently, or have to play them multiple times. The CSW field is also dominated by highly rated players who are often motivated to play Collins because of the opportunities for international play. And because the fields are small, usually all players are in a single division. While having many top players may be good or bad depending on your point of view, currently, if you are not a top player, you will likely lose a lot of the games that you play in a CSW tournament.

; '''The challenge rule may be less challenging'''
: Some players like the double-challenge rule and feel that it is an essential part of the game. While there is still a penalty for an incorrect challenge, and there is no reason a CSW game cannot remain double-challenge given the rules, 5 or 10 points per word is a more common de facto standard. This is enough to make you at least pause before challenging, so the aspect of the game embodied by double challenge is not completely lost, but it is not the same decision making process.

; '''CSW is not North American English'''
: CSW reflects a more global usage of the language and as such is not just reflective of the language in the U.S. and Canada. However, this is also true for all of the countries that use CSW when it is considered in relation to their usage of English.

; '''There are [[Obscure Collins words|obscure words in Collins]]'''
: While NWL contains obsolete and archaic words, the CSW contains more of them.

; '''The existence of CSW play splits the U.S. SCRABBLE scene'''
: While the large majority of North American players are NWL, a significant number of top players either play only NWL or only CSW. This divides the top divisions of tournaments and lowers the prestige of winning any particular one. Because the Scrabble community is relatively small, fragmentation in general is bad. There are, however, many other ways in which the scene is fragmented. For example, we have School play with the School lexicon; two other tournament sanctioning organizations: WGPO (NWL and CSW) and CoCo (CSW); unsanctioned, recreational club, competitive club and tournament play; online and in-person play; and a long list of variant rules that people like to try. It is part of the strength of the basic game that its many variations appeal to different people. Officially sanctioned CSW play lets us keep players who prefer it to NWL play in the fold, and encourages immigrants and tourists to join our community.

; '''There is no single official Collins dictionary with all the definitions'''
: The published Collins English dictionary does not contain all the words in CSW. This is because some words are only in the North American dictionaries, and some are in the Collins language corpus but not the printed dictionary. However, keep in mind that the U.S. lexicon is also spread over more than one dictionary (5, in fact), and that a companion volume to CSW, the Collins Official SCRABBLE Dictionary, contains short definitions for the 2-9 letter words, in a similar manner to OSPD. The [[Collins links|Collins edition]] of the Zyzzyva word study program likewise contains short definitions, for all word lengths up to 15 letters. Nevertheless, the lack of a coherent published dictionary-standard set of definitions is a notable downside to an official lexicon for a word game.

; '''Existing study may have to be redone'''
: A player who has spent a lot of time becoming expert in NWL is understandably reluctant to undertake the effort again merely to become proficient in another version of a game at which they already were. This is why it is important to note that a player expert in NWL can do well in CSW with a relatively much lower level of study. But there is still work for them to do, and, depending on the study method, it can add up. For example, using "stems" of 6 or 7 letters combined with mnemonics to know which combinations make a bingo will require significant revision because extra letters make bingos (see, e.g., [http://www.math.toronto.edu/jjchew/scrabble/anamonics-dd.html here]).

; '''A Collins player can take advantage of a NWL player'''
: Although as mentioned a NWL player can do well in CSW by learning relatively few words compared to what they learned for NWL, this does mean that an expert Collins player can use their knowledge of the lexicon to take advantage, by, for example, deliberately playing obscure words they know to be CSW only, or setting up and using CSW-only hooks. (For example, your author once played WHOW, then later hooked it to EWHOW for a lot of points, albeit in a rated tournament against another expert player.) This taking advantage is mitigated somewhat by the challenge rule, but penalties for challenging can still add up, and with new hooks the opponent may not even know there is a possible play.

; '''Differing strategy'''
: The relative importance of different aspects of strategy, such as offense versus defense, may change, meaning that those players particularly skilled at one may be disadvantaged. However, these aspects are not publicly well quantified. For more details, see [[How Collins differs]].

<br>Please direct comments about this page to its author, [[Nick Ball]].

Collins updates

2025-08-22T18:00:50Z

CM000457: Update text and links to CSW24 and NWL23

This page discusses how often changes are published to the Collins lexicon, and is part of our introduction to [[SOWPODS|Collins (SOWPODS) in North America]]. For brevity, we will refer to the North American and International lexica as NWL and CSW respectively.

== How Often is the Collins Word List Updated? ==

Both the NWL and CSW word lists are updated every few years. There has not been a fixed frequency of updates.

At first glance, this may seem unexpected. After all, if CSW includes lists from both the British and American dictionaries, shouldn’t it be updated twice as often? However, part of the motivation and criteria of publishing CSW is that it specifically includes the NWL. As in North America, the worldwide community wants the frequency of updates to result in a list that is reasonably up-to-date, without constant changes. Therefore, so far, the frequency of updates has been similar.

The current NWL was last updated in 2023. Recent previous editions were published in 2020, 2018, 2016, 2014, 2006, and 1998. CSW was updated in 2007, 2012, 2015, 2019, and 2021. The current CSW was updated in 2024.

Click [https://wespa.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/WESPA_Initiation_Kit_2024.pdf here] for a list of changes in CSW24.

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

Obscure Collins words

2025-08-22T17:59:12Z

CM000457: Minor text changes, CSW24

This page discusses how many of the words in the Collins lexicon seem obscure to [[NWL]] players, and is part of our introduction to [[SOWPODS|Collins (SOWPODS) in North America]]. For brevity, we will refer to the North American and International lexica as NWL and CSW respectively.

== Are All Collins Words Obscure, Obsolete, Foreign, etc.? ==

The short answer is mostly not, at least no more obscure than already makes up the majority of the NWL.

One must be careful to avoid a biased viewpoint, because when viewing the words that are CSW-only, one is not viewing the CSW itself, but just that part of it that contains the words not in the NWL. These are almost by definition obscure, because if they were common everyday words widely used in English they would already be in the NWL.

Breaking down the list of CSW-only words into categories by meaning shows that a significant majority of the new words that are introduced are further examples of the kinds of words that already make up the NWL, such as animals, currency, minerals, and so on. Because the Scrabble lexica (both NWL and CSW) are based on single-volume abridged dictionaries, and not the full unabridged versions, such as Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, or the Oxford English Dictionary, they in fact really contain only a small fraction of the totality of English words. It is thus not surprising they that do not entirely overlap.

There are some differences: CSW has more obsolete and archaic words. They are not unique to CSW (NWL has perhaps 1,000 already), but there are certainly more. There are also more dialect words, particularly Scots, a result of The Chambers Dictionary word source prior to Collins being based in Scotland, and its words being incorporated into the Collins Corpus. There are also significant numbers of words from countries where English is common, such as Australia, South Africa, and India. Ultimately, the ideal content of a word list is somewhat subjective.

The following list shows CSW-only words broken down into categories to show that a significant fraction are parts of categories that would not seem unreasonable to include in a word list, such as animals, food, and so on.

Note:

* Words do not appear in more than one category, so those not under ‘obsolete’, ‘archaic’, etc. are not obsolete or archaic
* The list was compiled manually, and so is not guaranteed complete
* The list was compiled from an older edition of CSW than CSW24, but the numbers will not have changed by large amounts so the list remains illustrative

{|
!Category|Number of Words
|-
|-
|Abbreviations
|86
|-
|Animals
|523
|-
|Archaic
|164
|-
|Australia
|112
|-
|Chemicals/minerals
|141
|-
|Clothing/fashion
|95
|-
|Computing
|32
|-
|Currency
|36
|-
|Dialect
|177
|-
|‘er’ nouns
|11
|-
|Food/Drink
|200
|-
|France
|112
|-
|Geography/geology
|87
|-
|Germany
|15
|-
|Heraldry
|44
|-
|India
|132
|-
|Interjections
|43
|-
|Irregular inflections
|345
|-
|Ireland
|36
|-
|Italy
|28
|-
|Japan
|21
|-
|Language
|51
|-
|Latin
|13
|-
|Law
|52
|-
|Mathematical
|22
|-
|Medical/anatomical
|153
|-
|Milton
|26
|-
|Music
|120
|-
|New Zealand
|122
|-
|Obsolete
|388
|-
|Other
|50
|-
|Other adjective
|383
|-
|Other -ier -iest adjective
|154
|-
|Other noun
|1269
|-
|Other verb
|573
|-
|Plants
|321
|-
|Religious/spiritual
|160
|-
|South Africa
|66
|-
|Scots
|573
|-
|Shakespeare
|207
|-
|Slang
|48
|-
|Spenser
|307
|-
|Sports/games
|77
|-
|Units
|41
|-
|USA
|12
|-
|Welsh
|7
|-
!Total
!635
|}

Aside from this list, an excellent resource for further lists of words by categories is at the [https://www.absp.org.uk Association of British Scrabble Players] website under their Words section. These lists, compiled by David Sutton, cover the full range of CSW words from 2-15 letters, with useful one-line definitions throughout. The lists mark recent additions to CSW, but there is no differentiation between CSW and NWL words.

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

Important Collins words

2025-08-22T17:57:21Z

CM000457: Update to CSW24, and text updates

This page describes which Collins-only words are important for an [[NWL]] player to learn, and is part of our introduction to [[SOWPODS|Collins (SOWPODS) in North America]]. For brevity, we will refer to the North American and International lexica, as NWL and CSW respectively. Our comparison numbers are given for NWL23 and CSW24, but the same ideas apply for the alternative North American lexica WOW24 and NSWL24, which are very similar to NWL for the purposes of this page.

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

In principle, to play CSW from an NWL background you need to learn very little because NWL is close to being a pure subset of CSW. From close to a quarter million words in CSW, there are just 130 of length 2-8 letters that are only good in NWL. CSW24 contains 87,984 words not in NWL23, of which 31,445 are 2-8 letters in length, and 56,539 are 9-15 letters in length.

CSW and its predecessor, SOWPODS, were designed this way, with the intent of encompassing both the British and American word lists. NWL used to be even closer to being a pure subset, but events in the intervening years have caused some drift apart.

So while in theory you can play CSW right away, in practice there are some useful basic words to study. Because the fundamentals of the game do not change between the lexica, the kinds of words that are the most useful to learn in NWL are also the best in CSW. Therefore studying the 2s, 3s, JQXZ words, some 4s and 5s, high probability bingos, etc., continues to be the most productive approach.

== 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

<br>While 20 is not a large number, you probably will not remember them all in one sitting, but they will become a natural part of the game over time. Anecdotally, the ones NWL players have the most difficulty seeing over the board are CH and ST, because C has no 2 letter words in NWL, and ST is an unusual letter combination. FY, KY, and NY are also notable for their combination of lack of vowels and scoring, Z becomes a much more powerful tile with the addition of ZE and ZO, and there are several more 2-vowel 2s: EA, EE, IO, OO, and OU.

== [[Three-letter words]] ==

Following the 2s, there are 267 3s.

The most useful 3s are:

1-10: QIN IDE EXO OWO ENE ITA OYE JAI ZEA URE
11-20: JOR IWI AIA AYU ZEL WEX WOF WOX NYE OBO
21-30: ZEX AME TEX ONY DZO NEF ZOL DOF GIO YEX
...

<br> "Usefulness" here is chosen using Zyzzyva's ''playability'' measure, which essentially measures how much you gain by knowing that word. The words with highest playability tend to be high scoring ones that occur often, or letter combinations that are not necessarily high probability but when they do come up they are often significantly better than the next best move. These include words like vowel dumps, and awkward letter combinations such as FV, for example FAUVE in NWL and VIFDA in CSW.

Of the CSW-only 3s, the one that comes up by far the most is QIN, the Chinese musical instrument. Other interesting patterns emerge such as ?W? being valid with all 5 vowels: AWA, EWE, IWI, OWO, and UWU, but it is not in scope here to go into detail.

You do not need to know 100% of the 3s before continuing. The next most useful words after the 2s and 3s 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, high probability (or playability) 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 ONIE IDEE VIAE HUIA ALOO EOAN AITU ...
5s: AENEI AIDOI AINEE AULOI BOOAI OUIJA ZOAEA ZOOEA
6s: EUOUAE ZOAEAE ZOOEAE
7s: ETAERIO EATERIE AIERIES OLEARIA EUGARIE DOULEIA MOINEAU AURELIA EUOUAES EQUINIA ...
8s: ETAERIOS ERIONITE AEROTONE NOTITIAE DOUANIER AEGIRITE AEGIRINE INAURATE OLEARIAS ETOURDIE ...

== [[Short JQXZ words]] ==

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

== Useful 4s and 5s ==

4s: 1-10: EUOI QINS HIOI WEXE EVOE WAQF FIQH JOBE ONIE IDEE
11-20: LAZO VEGO VIAE BENJ HUIA GREX JUVE ALOO TREZ EOAN
...
5s: 1-10: QEEMA TALAQ QORMA YITIE OUIJA AENEI QUOIF QUOAD GUQIN AULOI
11-20: AINEE BOOAI ZOAEA ZOOEA QUAIR AIDOI JEWIE VINEW WAQFS QUINO
...

== [[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 UWU
HUHU KUKU KUTU KUZU PUKU PULU RURU SUSU UMUS UTUS WUDU ZULU

== Q-not-followed-by-U words ==

FIQH -s QAMEEZ -es TALAQ -s
GUQIN -s QASIDA -s TSADDIQ -s
INQILAB -s QAWWAL -s TSADDIQIM
MUQADDAM -s QEEMA -s TZADDIQ -s
QABALISM -s QIN -s TZADDIQIM
QABALIST -s QINGHAOSU -s WAQF -s
QABALISTIC QINTARKA YAQONA -s
QAIMAQAM -s QORMA -s
QALAMDAN -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 [https://blog.collinsdictionary.com/scrabble/scrabble-tools/ Collins Zyzzyva] word study program.

== Collins Cheat Sheet ==

'''NOTE:''' The Cheat sheet needs updating from CSW21 to CSW24, but is otherwise as described

We have incorporated the above into a [[Media:Collins_Cheat_Sheet_CSW21_Part_1_of_2.pdf|Collins Cheat Sheet]], that is designed to be used as a reference by players of CSW who started off using NWL, in settings that allow it.

It resembles the original [http://www.cross-tables.com/cs 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 [[Media:Collins_Cheat_Sheet_CSW21_Part_2_of_2.pdf|Collins Cheat Sheet Part 2]], which contains a useful array of the hooks to CSW 2s, and the full set of CSW 4s.

The sheets could 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]].

How Collins differs

2025-08-22T17:46:47Z

CM000457: Update some wording

This page describes '''how Collins differs''' from [[NASPA_Word_List|NWL]] as a playing lexicon, and is part of our introduction to [[SOWPODS|Collins (SOWPODS) in North America]]. For brevity, we will refer to the North American and International lexica, NWL2023 and CSW24, as NWL and CSW respectively.

== Fundamentals ==

Fundamentally, the game does not change. It is still the same Scrabble experience, as enjoyed by many worldwide. The overall game, and the basic strategy such as finding a good score plus rack leave, are not changed by moving from NWL to CSW. In other words, it will still feel like the same game, just one with more words. If you were handing out a sheet of tips for new players, the same sheet could be handed out for CSW as it has been for NWL. There is a far greater difference between the kitchen table and the club than there is between the two lexica.

So the differences are not in the fundamentals, but in the details. The extra words are the most noticeable, and because there are so many of them, you will use them, particularly the short ones.

== Challenge rule ==

After the words, the next biggest difference is the challenge rule: CSW games are generally not played to double-challenge, but with a points penalty for an incorrect challenge. This is not intrinsic to the lexicon (the international [[WESPA]] rules do in fact allow double challenge, if desired), but has emerged as the de facto standard between no penalty at all, as played in Britain, and loss of a turn. In all cases, however, a successful challenge still results in a loss of turn for the person playing the incorrect word.

The altered challenge [[Rules|rule]] compared to the North American double-challenge rule is as follows:

* If your opponent makes a play, you challenge, and their play is good, instead of losing your turn, the opponent gains points.
* Typically, this is 5 or 10 points per word challenged.
* After you have made an unsuccessful challenge, it is still your turn.
* If you challenge correctly, the rule is the same as North America: the opponent loses their turn and their incorrect play is removed from the board.
* The determination of move acceptability is done in the usual way: the play is ruled either acceptable or not, regardless of the number of words challenged. Which individual words are good or bad is not revealed.

<br>So if you, say, challenge two words, the play is ruled acceptable, and the penalty is 10 points per word, the opponent gets an extra 20 points, but it is still your turn.

Note, however, that there is a subtlety. Like North American double-challenge, the rule still applies on the final move. But, unlike double-challenge, the penalty still has an effect (you cannot lose a turn if the opponent has played out because there are no more turns). So the free challenge when the opponent plays out is lost. The opponent can, therefore, still gain the penalty of 5, 10, etc., points if you challenge incorrectly, which something to keep in mind if it is a close game.

It is not yet clear whether North American CSW games will ultimately end up as penalty rather than double challenge, but the current norm is a 5 or 10 point penalty.

It is also worth noting that with online play another form of challenge rule has become more popular: void challenge. In this form, the user is not allowed by the software to play an invalid word, and can check the validity of words before they make their play. This form of challenge rule is unaffected by which lexicon is used.

== More choices of plays ==

Generally, there will be more choices for each play in CSW. The increased number of 2-3 letter words and hooks means there are often more possibilities to make overlapping plays, or play a bingo. While in some situations increased hooks can make it harder to block the board, in other situations increased overlaps can make it easier to play without creating openings. A high scoring open game can thus be played, but this style of play is not forced upon the player because board areas with a dense covering of words with few openings can be created.

A consequence of the extra choice of moves is that there may be less time to think about each individual play than in NWL, which could be said to place a higher premium on play finding than on the strategic merits of individual moves versus each other. However, the number of possible plays and scope for strategic thought about each one vastly outweighs what can actually be achieved by any human player in a real game situation in either lexicon. So the perceived balance between the two things ultimately comes down to personal preference.

Some of the most significant sources of extra word choices are:

;'''Two letter words'''
: There are 20 extra two letter words in CSW24: CH, DI, EA, EE, FY, GU, IO, JA, KO, KY, NY, OB, OO, OU, ST, UG, UR, YU, ZE, and ZO. Note that the letter C therefore now has a two letter word, CH, but there are still no two letter words containing a V.
;'''High-scorers'''
: JA, ZE, ZO, and more threes, such as JAI, QIN, EXO, and ZEA, mean there is more potential for a 50- or 60-point J, Q, X or Z play. While sometimes your opponent might get these, in a game it is more likely to even out because they occur more often: your opponent may get one, then you get one too.
;'''Vowel dumps'''
: Short words with numerous vowels have a greater variety, including such examples as AIA, AUA, AUE, and EUOI.
;'''Bingos'''
: There will be a playable bingo more often. Some high probability sets of letters that make no words in TWL now make a playable word, such as OTARINE, ETAERIO, ROASTIE, and ORIGANE. Of course, many combinations, such as ADEILNR or ADEILNT, still make no words.
;'''Plurals'''
: CSW contains both more words and more meanings, so some words in NWL that do not take an S now do, e.g., OIS, AVAS, FEWS.
;'''Comparatives and superlatives'''
: CSW is more generous in allowing -er -est or -ier -iest inflections, e.g., FIE, FOU, GEY, OORIE, or QUARE make FIER, OORIEST, etc. Some of these are now-allowed comparatives/superlatives, others are from added meanings.
;'''Gerunds'''
: A particularly large addition is that more -INGS words are good. Some of the perhaps surprising omissions from NWL, such as GRADINGS, are good in CSW.
;'''Other inflections'''
: Other extra inflections follow similarly, e.g., some TWL words that are adjectives or nouns in NWL become nouns or verbs in CSW.

<br>For more on the words, see [[Important Collins words]].

== Fewer exchanges ==

For the same reason that there are more choices, it is also usually more feasible to be able to make a play rather than be forced to exchange. The increased number of two letter words and other short words such as vowel dumps often mean that there is a play that is better than exchanging, even if it only scores 10–20 points. Often this is because the play uses the same or similar tiles to what would have been exchanged.

== Can catch up from behind ==

In an NWL game, if a player bingos a couple of times quickly early in the game, their strategy is often simply to close down the board and make it difficult for the opponent to catch up. While the same block-when-ahead principle applies to CSW, because there are more words, it is often possible to create more chances to catch up again, through the increased numbers of possibilities for creating hooks, and the extra 2-letter words making it more likely that a bingo lane is available. Thus, the game is rarely “won” after just a few moves.

A converse to this is that sometimes the opponent can run away to a big score with many bingos, and you are powerless to stop them. Those who have played CSW against a top level computer player can attest to this!

== Higher game score ==

Game scores are higher, although not by as much as one might expect. A top-level player, or the computer, will average about 425 points a game in NWL against an equally matched opponent. In CSW, they will average about 450. This is approximately a 6% difference, or about 2 points more per move. Of course, in games with unequal opposition, scores can be lower or higher in either lexicon.

== Harder to play invalid words ==

The challenge rule, described at the start of this page, generally means that it is harder to play and get away with invalid words (phoneys). In particular, an expert player cannot just put down anything against a novice, because the novice can still challenge without risking the loss of their turn. Therefore, for a new CSW player facing an expert, this “bluffing” aspect is not as intimidating as under double challenge. However, experience shows that the non-double-challenge rule is by no means trivial: many phoneys can and do still get played, and point penalties from lost challenges can alter the game outcome. The purpose of the penalty is to retain the stop-and-think aspect of the double challenge, but to keep the onus on the player making the move to play valid words, because if you play a phoney and it is challenged, you do still lose your turn.

== Balance between defense and offense is shifted ==

There is a prevailing opinion that CSW encourages a more offensive rather than defensive playing style, favoring word finding rather than considering the strategic merits of different moves. This is because it generally seems easier to just keep scoring, with less regard for board position, or what the opponent does. However, it is not clear exactly to what extent this is really the case, compared to simply playing the same open style in NWL for the majority of the game. Given the prevailing opinion, it seems likely to have some truth to it, but little empirical or quantitative evidence has been presented. Both CSW and NWL provide rich strategical possibilities, far more than anyone can analyze completely during the course of a game, for a variety of playing styles.

== Overall ==

While playing CSW is not identical to playing NWL, the game as known and loved by thousands of tournament players across North America is not fundamentally changed by playing CSW.

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

SOWPODS

2025-08-22T17:40:31Z

CM000457: Update to CSW24 being current, fix typo

The '''Collins Scrabble Words''' ('''CSW'''), formerly known as the '''SOWPODS''' lexicon, is a word list first published in 2007 by Collins, and updated in 2012, 2015, 2019, 2021, and 2024. NASPA has sanctioned official games played in the CSW lexicon in a separate [[SOWPODS rating system|CSW rating system]] since January 2010. The 2012 edition was in effect until August 31, 2015; the 2015 edition took effect on September 1, 2015; the 2019 edition took effect on July 1, 2019; the 2021 edition took effect on December 1, 2021.

'''The 2024 edition took effect on January 1, 2025.''' CSW tournaments in progress on that date (including all events - e.g., Early Birds) used the 2024 edition.


English-language Scrabble as a whole is played to two lexica, depending on country. Currently, approximately 50 countries use CSW, and 3 use predominantly the [[NASPA Word List]] ('''NWL''', the North American lexicon), with some CSW play. These countries are Canada, Israel, and the United States.


== Coinage ==

The name “SOWPODS” was coined as an anagram of OSW+OSPD, the names of the two lexicons (the British Official Scrabble Words and the American Official SCRABBLE Players Dictionary) that were originally merged to form SOWPODS. The SOWPODS word list is currently edited by the [[WESPA]] Dictionary Committee; comments concerning the list should be directed to the NASPA [[International Committee]]. The CSW word list contains almost all of the words found in the [[NASPA Word List]], as well as a large number of other English words from around the world.

== More information ==

The purpose of these webpages is to provide informative and, hopefully, interesting information to those North American tournament and club players who are curious about trying out the CSW game. They do not, therefore, aim to introduce Scrabble play as a whole, but those parts of it that change if one moves from playing NWL to playing CSW. Thus, we start with how the game differs from NWL, introduce the most useful extra words to know, address some commonly asked questions and concerns, then describe the current CSW scene as it is evolving in North America. Finally, we present links to further resources outside of this wiki.

The sections below follow on from each other in order, but each can be read on its own.

* [[How Collins differs]]
* [[Important Collins words]]
* [[Obscure Collins words]]
* [[Collins updates]]
* [[Collins pros and cons]]
* [[Collins tournaments and ratings]]
* [[Try it]]
* [[Collins links]]

<br>Please direct comments about this page to its author, [[Nick Ball]].

Collins links

2022-02-06T06:32:45Z

CM000457: Add CSW21 discount link

This page provides links related Collins, and is part of our introduction to [[SOWPODS|Collins (SOWPODS) in North America]]. For brevity, we will refer to the North American and International lexica as NWL and CSW respectively.

Since once can obviously find much material online by web-searching "Scrabble", "Collins", etc., we limit the selection to the most useful links for the player new to CSW.

These links are all up-to-date for CSW21 unless otherwise noted.

== General ==

<table style="width: 100%; text-align: left;" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.scrabble.com">Scrabble</a></td>
<td> General worldwide site for Scrabble </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.scrabbleplayers.org">NASPA</a></td>
<td> North American Scrabble Players Association </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.wespa.org">WESPA</a></td>
<td> World English-Language Scrabble Players Association </td>
</tr>
</table>

== Playing Guides & Books ==

Some of these are not up-to-date for the current CSW, but the effect is minor

<table style="width: 100%; text-align: left;" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.breakingthegame.net/csw">Breaking the Game</a></td>
<td> Cutting-edge Scrabble strategy, puzzles, etc. </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.breakingthegame.net/word">Word</a></td>
<td> Basic Scrabble strategy </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.breakingthegame.net/scrabblesolved">Scrabble Solved</a></td>
<td> Advanced strategy </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/101-Ways-Win-Scrabble-success/dp/000758914X/ref=pd_sbs_1/259-2710718-7958737">101 Ways to Win at Scrabble</a></td>
<td> Recent British book </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scrabble-Secrets-board-Collins-Little/dp/0008395837/ref=pd_sbs_1/259-2710718-7958737">Scrabble Secrets</a></td>
<td> Another one, by 1993 world champion Mark Nyman </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/cka/How-Win-At-Scrabble-Andrew-Fisher/0713488204">How to Win at Scrabble</a></td>
<td> From 2004, but comprehensive guide to high level play </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.scrabbleplayershandbook.com">The Scrabble Player's Handbook</a></td>
<td> Free online PDF </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Word-Addict-secrets-SCRABBLE-champion/dp/0008146470">Word Addict: Secrets of a World SCRABBLE Champion</a></td>
<td> Recent world champion's story, with game insight </td>
</tr>
</table>

== Software ==

<table style="width: 100%; text-align: left;" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.quackle.org">Quackle</a></td>
<td> Widely used software that can be configured for Scrabble </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://zyzzyva.net">NASPA Zyzzyva</a></td>
<td> Widely used word study software</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.collinsdictionary.com/scrabble/scrabble-tools">Collins Zyzzyva</a></td>
<td> Version that does not contain NWL, but has more comprehensive definitions for CSW, spanning 2-15 letters </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.woogles.io">Woogles</a></td>
<td> Online play, including CSW, human & computer players, live games, chat, tournaments, etc. </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.aerolith.org">Aerolith</a></td>
<td> Online game to practice anagramming, in NWL or CSW </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.poslarchive.com/math/software/tsh">Tournament Shell</a></td>
<td> Tournament directing software that can do NWL or CSW </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://director.victoriascrabble.org">Director!</a></td>
<td> Another tournament directing software, more graphically based </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.codehappy.net/elise">Elise</a></td>
<td> Another word game playing software </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.wolfberg.net/what">WHAT</a></td>
<td> Another word finding software </td>
</tr>
</table>

== Word Lists ==

<table style="width: 100%; text-align: left;" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tr>
<td> [[Media:Collins_Cheat_Sheet_CSW21_Part_1_of_2.pdf|Collins Cheat Sheet Part 1]]</td>
<td> Useful CSW-only words for handy reference: 2s, 3s, high probability bingos, the 52 2-8 letter words only in NWL, etc. </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> [[Media:Collins_Cheat_Sheet_CSW21_Part_2_of_2.pdf|Collins Cheat Sheet Part 2]]</td>
<td> More useful words: hooks of 2s, all the 4s </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Official-SCRABBLETM-Words-official-comprehensive-dp-0008523886/dp/0008523886/ref=dp_ob_title_bk">Collins Official Scrabble Words</a></td>
<td> Official CSW21 book. Also available <a href="https://collins.co.uk/products/9780008523886">here</a> for a 50% discount, using code SCRABBLEWORDS50 until Dec 31st 2022 </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/SCRABBLETM-Dictionary-official-playable-letters-dp-0008523916/dp/0008523916/ref=dp_ob_title_bk">Collins Scrabble Dictionary</a></td>
<td> 2-9 letter CSW21 words, with short definitions </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Collins-Ultimate-Scrabble-Dictionary-Word-dp-0008320284/dp/0008320284/ref=dp_ob_title_bk">Collins Ultimate Scrabble Dictionary and Wordlist</a></td>
<td> Still CSW19 rather than CSW21, but includes 10-15 letter words in addition to the 2s-9s </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.absp.org.uk">ABSP words by category</a></td>
<td> Extensive sets of lists by many definition-based categories (languages, food, etc.) Select the "Words" dropdown menu from the website's top menu bar. </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/winningwords">Winning Words</a></td>
<td> Set of books with useful categories by part of speech, etc. </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.normanwei.com/">Anagram Cartoons Book</a></td>
<td> Anagrams + cartoons valid in NWL and CSW </td>
</tr>
</table>

== Tournaments & Ratings ==

<table style="width: 100%; text-align: left;" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.scrabbleplayers.org/tourneys/calendar.html">NASPA tournament calendar</a></td>
<td> Official calendar of rated NASPA tournaments, both NWL and CSW </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.cross-tables.com">Cross-Tables</a></td>
<td> Tournaments, ratings, results, etc. Front page has good visual list with obvious icons showing that a tournament is NWL or CSW </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.scrabbleplayers.org/w/SOWPODS_rating_system">NASPA SOWPODS ratings</a></td>
<td> Description of the CSW ratings, with results </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.wespa.org/ratings.shtml">WESPA ratings</a></td>
<td> World ratings </td>
</tr>
</table>

== Etc. ==

This list is far from complete, for example, there is a lot of other online video content like twitch.tv.

<table style="width: 100%; text-align: left;" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/217094718419713">Collins Scrabble Players</a></td>
<td> Online pro-CSW in North America community </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/TWLtoCollins">Transition from NWL to Collins</a></td>
<td> Second online community </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/zapateo99">Dweebovision</a></td>
<td> Videos of CSW games with clear and insightful commentary </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.word-buff.com">Word Buff</a></td>
<td> Lots of word-related material </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://learningscrabblewords.blogspot.com/2017/05/on-switch-hitting.html">Learning Scrabble Words</a></td>
<td> Blog entry on learning Collins words </td>
</tr>
</table>

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

Collins links

2022-02-03T23:56:41Z

CM000457: Update to CSW21, and various links

This page provides links related Collins, and is part of our introduction to [[SOWPODS|Collins (SOWPODS) in North America]]. For brevity, we will refer to the North American and International lexica as NWL and CSW respectively.

Since once can obviously find much material online by web-searching "Scrabble", "Collins", etc., we limit the selection to the most useful links for the player new to CSW.

These links are all up-to-date for CSW21 unless otherwise noted.

== General ==

<table style="width: 100%; text-align: left;" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.scrabble.com">Scrabble</a></td>
<td> General worldwide site for Scrabble </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.scrabbleplayers.org">NASPA</a></td>
<td> North American Scrabble Players Association </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.wespa.org">WESPA</a></td>
<td> World English-Language Scrabble Players Association </td>
</tr>
</table>

== Playing Guides & Books ==

Some of these are not up-to-date for the current CSW, but the effect is minor

<table style="width: 100%; text-align: left;" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.breakingthegame.net/csw">Breaking the Game</a></td>
<td> Cutting-edge Scrabble strategy, puzzles, etc. </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.breakingthegame.net/word">Word</a></td>
<td> Basic Scrabble strategy </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.breakingthegame.net/scrabblesolved">Scrabble Solved</a></td>
<td> Advanced strategy </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/101-Ways-Win-Scrabble-success/dp/000758914X/ref=pd_sbs_1/259-2710718-7958737">101 Ways to Win at Scrabble</a></td>
<td> Recent British book </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scrabble-Secrets-board-Collins-Little/dp/0008395837/ref=pd_sbs_1/259-2710718-7958737">Scrabble Secrets</a></td>
<td> Another one, by 1993 world champion Mark Nyman </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/cka/How-Win-At-Scrabble-Andrew-Fisher/0713488204">How to Win at Scrabble</a></td>
<td> From 2004, but comprehensive guide to high level play </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.scrabbleplayershandbook.com">The Scrabble Player's Handbook</a></td>
<td> Free online PDF </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Word-Addict-secrets-SCRABBLE-champion/dp/0008146470">Word Addict: Secrets of a World SCRABBLE Champion</a></td>
<td> Recent world champion's story, with game insight </td>
</tr>
</table>

== Software ==

<table style="width: 100%; text-align: left;" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.quackle.org">Quackle</a></td>
<td> Widely used software that can be configured for Scrabble </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://zyzzyva.net">NASPA Zyzzyva</a></td>
<td> Widely used word study software</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.collinsdictionary.com/scrabble/scrabble-tools">Collins Zyzzyva</a></td>
<td> Version that does not contain NWL, but has more comprehensive definitions for CSW, spanning 2-15 letters </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.woogles.io">Woogles</a></td>
<td> Online play, including CSW, human & computer players, live games, chat, tournaments, etc. </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.aerolith.org">Aerolith</a></td>
<td> Online game to practice anagramming, in NWL or CSW </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.poslarchive.com/math/software/tsh">Tournament Shell</a></td>
<td> Tournament directing software that can do NWL or CSW </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://director.victoriascrabble.org">Director!</a></td>
<td> Another tournament directing software, more graphically based </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.codehappy.net/elise">Elise</a></td>
<td> Another word game playing software </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.wolfberg.net/what">WHAT</a></td>
<td> Another word finding software </td>
</tr>
</table>

== Word Lists ==

<table style="width: 100%; text-align: left;" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tr>
<td> [[Media:Collins_Cheat_Sheet_CSW21_Part_1_of_2.pdf|Collins Cheat Sheet Part 1]]</td>
<td> Useful CSW-only words for handy reference: 2s, 3s, high probability bingos, the 52 2-8 letter words only in NWL, etc. </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> [[Media:Collins_Cheat_Sheet_CSW21_Part_2_of_2.pdf|Collins Cheat Sheet Part 2]]</td>
<td> More useful words: hooks of 2s, all the 4s </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Official-SCRABBLETM-Words-official-comprehensive-dp-0008523886/dp/0008523886/ref=dp_ob_title_bk">Collins Official Scrabble Words</a></td>
<td> Official CSW21 book </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/SCRABBLETM-Dictionary-official-playable-letters-dp-0008523916/dp/0008523916/ref=dp_ob_title_bk">Collins Scrabble Dictionary</a></td>
<td> 2-9 letter CSW21 words, with short definitions </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Collins-Ultimate-Scrabble-Dictionary-Word-dp-0008320284/dp/0008320284/ref=dp_ob_title_bk">Collins Ultimate Scrabble Dictionary and Wordlist</a></td>
<td> Still CSW19 rather than CSW21, but includes 10-15 letter words in addition to the 2s-9s </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.absp.org.uk">ABSP words by category</a></td>
<td> Extensive sets of lists by many definition-based categories (languages, food, etc.) Select the "Words" dropdown menu from the website's top menu bar. </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/winningwords">Winning Words</a></td>
<td> Set of books with useful categories by part of speech, etc. </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.normanwei.com/">Anagram Cartoons Book</a></td>
<td> Anagrams + cartoons valid in NWL and CSW </td>
</tr>
</table>

== Tournaments & Ratings ==

<table style="width: 100%; text-align: left;" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.scrabbleplayers.org/tourneys/calendar.html">NASPA tournament calendar</a></td>
<td> Official calendar of rated NASPA tournaments, both NWL and CSW </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.cross-tables.com">Cross-Tables</a></td>
<td> Tournaments, ratings, results, etc. Front page has good visual list with obvious icons showing that a tournament is NWL or CSW </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.scrabbleplayers.org/w/SOWPODS_rating_system">NASPA SOWPODS ratings</a></td>
<td> Description of the CSW ratings, with results </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.wespa.org/ratings.shtml">WESPA ratings</a></td>
<td> World ratings </td>
</tr>
</table>

== Etc. ==

This list is far from complete, for example, there is a lot of other online video content like twitch.tv.

<table style="width: 100%; text-align: left;" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/217094718419713">Collins Scrabble Players</a></td>
<td> Online pro-CSW in North America community </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/TWLtoCollins">Transition from NWL to Collins</a></td>
<td> Second online community </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/zapateo99">Dweebovision</a></td>
<td> Videos of CSW games with clear and insightful commentary </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="http://www.word-buff.com">Word Buff</a></td>
<td> Lots of word-related material </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="https://learningscrabblewords.blogspot.com/2017/05/on-switch-hitting.html">Learning Scrabble Words</a></td>
<td> Blog entry on learning Collins words </td>
</tr>
</table>

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

Try it

2022-02-03T22:42:55Z

CM000457: Update for CSW21, including cheat sheet links

This page describes ways to try out Collins Scrabble, and is part of our introduction to [[SOWPODS|Collins (SOWPODS) in North America]]. For brevity, we will refer to the North American and International lexica as NWL and CSW respectively.

While these pages have attempted to provide information about the CSW game, like many things, the only way to really find out if you like it is to try it.

There are several possibilities:

== Quackle ==

[http://www.quackle.org Quackle] is computer software that will play the CSW lexicon. Go to the '''Settings''' tab and set it to use the latest CSW lexicon. You can also highlight the CSW words as they are played and in the history/choices by going to the preferences settings under the main menu. The words when played will be colored, and when written on screen will be appended by the # (octothorp) sign. Quackle calls CSW the British words.

== Zyzzyva ==

Zyzzyva is a word study tool that allows many forms of CSW study. These include searching words by many criteria, setting up quizzes such as anagrams, and the card box study system to aid memory.

Two versions are widely used:

* [http://zyzzyva.net NASPA Zyzzyva] allows lists to be constructed in either NWL or CSW, and one can select words that are CSW-only. This is how several of the lists in this wiki and the Collins Cheat sheet (see below) were, in part, constructed. Currently it does not have definitions for CSW words, only the NWL ones, and the playability values are not useful.

* [https://blog.collinsdictionary.com/scrabble/scrabble-tools/ Collins Zyzzyva] is available worldwide for download. It includes the CSW lexicon but not the NWL lexicon, so it is less useful for a NWL player moving to CSW. However, it has a comprehensive and authoritative set of definitions for all words from 2-15 letters, coming largely from the same work that provided the [https://www.absp.org.uk word lists] at the Association of British Scrabble Players website mentioned earlier in this wiki.

== Online ==

[http://www.woogles.io Woogles] has a large number of players who play the CSW lexicon, as well as NWL players. The CSW dictionary is available for [https://www.facebook.com/ScrabbleGO Scrabble GO], e.g., on the phone. The popular [https://www.zynga.com/games/words-friends Words with Friends] does not use CSW or NWL.

== At a club ==

This could be as simple as two club members agreeing to play a game to CSW. However, many people before have found that allowing a 'cheat sheet' of, for example, the 2s and 3s, the [[Media:Collins_Cheat_Sheet_CSW21_Part_1_of_2.pdf|Collins Cheat Sheet]] and [[Media:Collins_Cheat_Sheet_CSW21_Part_2_of_2.pdf|Part 2]] from this wiki, or other cheat sheets, works well. You could also use a more relaxed challenge rule, such as 5-10 points, no penalty for challenging, or even void challenge. Some clubs have held evenings where people play CSW, and others have regular CSW players. Unfortunately there is no comprehensive listing of which clubs have CSW players.

== At a tournament ==

North American tournaments that offer a CSW division are listed on the [http://www.scrabbleplayers.org/tourneys/calendar.html NASPA tournament calendar], and at [http://www.cross-tables.com cross-tables]. CSW divisions tend to be smaller than NWL ones and often have highly rated players, but the easier challenge rule mitigates the difference somewhat. A CSW division can be rated when it has 4 or more people, and 2 or more are NASPA rated.

If you are a director, it is possible to add a CSW division to an existing tournament, since tournament directing software can incorporate the NASPA CSW ratings.

== More ==

For links to more CSW resources, e.g., books, see the [[Collins links|links page]].

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

Collins tournaments and ratings

2022-02-03T22:25:57Z

CM000457: Update for CSW21

This page discusses North American tournaments and ratings using the Collins lexicon, and is part of our introduction to [[SOWPODS|Collins (SOWPODS) in North America]]. For brevity, we will refer to the North American and International lexica as NWL and CSW respectively.

== Collins Tournaments ==

While there have been occasional tournaments played to the international lexicon in the US since the 1990s (the ’93 World Championships in New York, for example, because the Worlds have always used the international lexicon), and occasional others such as Wisconsin Dells, Toronto, and Texas, it was in 2010 that the number of CSW tournaments started to increase significantly. This was in large part due to NASPA’s decision to allow CSW to be rated, which has given the impetus to several organizers to add CSW divisions, or create new tournaments to meet demand.

It remains to be seen how much these numbers will continue to increase, and what the long-term future of the CSW scene will be, but the possibility of being able to play CSW exclusively, if one would like to, is now workable.

Also of note is that there are a significant number of prominent international tournaments with quite substantial sponsorship and prizes, several of which are well into the $1000s, and some over $10,000. These are listed at the [http://www.wespa.org WESPA] website.

The most concise and visual overview of current CSW tournaments can be found at [http://www.cross-tables.com cross-tables], where upcoming tournaments are listed, and those offering CSW divisions have a yellow CSW icon next to them. This list is not guaranteed complete, for example, the monthly Berkeley tournaments do not normally post their entrants list, so the CSW icon does not show up. CSW divisions are usually conditional on 4 players entering the division, and there is not normally more than one division.

The NASPA website lists all upcoming rated tournaments on the [{{SERVER}}/tourneys/calendar.html calendar of future events]. Clicking any event brings up the expanded listing, and doing a find-in-page for "Collins" or "CSW" can locate tournaments that may not have been shown in cross-tables.

For information on directing a CSW tournament, or adding a CSW division to a tournament, see the page on [[Directing SOWPODS tournaments]].

== Collins Ratings ==

Tournaments played to CSW in North America and sanctioned by NASPA are rated under the <a href="http://www.scrabbleplayers.org/w/SOWPODS_rating_system">NASPA SOWPODS</a> rating system. Thus:

'''Playing a CSW tournament has no effect on your regular NASPA rating'''

As well as the national systems, CSW tournaments in North America are eligible to be rated by the <a href="http://www.wespa.org">World English Scrabble Players Association (WESPA)</a>, the governing body of the English game worldwide, under their international system. In other words, if you play a CSW tournament, you can get a world ranking. The WESPA system uses a different formula to NASPA, but the resulting distribution of ratings is broadly similar.

The <a href="http://www.scrabbleplayers.org/w/SOWPODS_rating_system">NASPA SOWPODS</a> system is described further on this wiki, but is essentially identical to the regular rating. Existing tournament software such as [http://www.math.utoronto.ca/jjchew/software/tsh tsh] and [http://director.victoriascrabble.org Director!] can handle this. Hence, if you are already directing a tournament, adding a CSW division to it is straightforward.

Those with a regular NASPA rating from NWL start with that same rating under NASPA SOWPODS, but with zero games.

Several players are rated under two or more of the rating systems, and it is possible to compare their ratings in different systems.

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

Collins pros and cons

2022-02-03T07:09:29Z

CM000457: Polish text

This page discusses the pros and cons to playing using the Collins lexicon when coming from a background of playing NWL, and is part of our introduction to [[SOWPODS|Collins (SOWPODS) in North America]]. For brevity, we will refer to the North American and International lexica as NWL and CSW respectively.

While the cons are certainly not intended to discourage anyone from playing CSW, it is useful to be aware of them before committing to learning and playing the CSW game.

The items here are largely given from the North American perspective, as this is the dominant community in English language Scrabble that does not use Collins already.

Some of the "pro" arguments given below are later matched by their converses in the "cons" section that comes after, but others may not be given explicitly in both directions in the two sections.

The list given here is not definitive and ultimately each player will form their own viewpoint.

== What Are the Upsides to Collins? ==

Many of these arguments are well-rehearsed, having been advocated by some players since the 1980s, and after the first World Championships in 1991, played then and ever since to SOWPODS and later CSW.

The upsides of Collins for the individual can blend into general arguments for the community as a whole to play to one English language word list instead of two, but here we focus on the pro- arguments at an individual level.

; '''Ability to play with the world community'''
: To most of the tournament playing world, NWL Scrabble is English Scrabble with about 25% of the words disallowed, with no memorizable pattern. It is thus inaccessible to most, and consequently played little. Collins opens up the world English language Scrabble community to the NWL player that would otherwise largely be unseen. This is especially relevant now that online play has become more prevalent after COVID-19.

; '''More words allowed'''
: Many words in NWL that players are surprised are invalid are allowed in Collins. Greater inclusivity gives better lexicon consistency in some areas, such as -INGS and -ISE vs. -IZE words, although the overall lexicon integrity is not necessarily any better, and is in some ways worse because more obsolete words are present.

; '''More choices of plays'''
: Similar to more words, a typical Collins move has more play choices. Depending on personal preference between play-finding and strategically selecting between found play choices, this may be good or bad, but most players prefer things such as the bingo or the Q on their rack to be playable than not.

; '''Better Zyzzyva definitions'''
: The Collins definitions in Zyzzyva benefit from the extensive work over many years of former UK dictionary committee member David Sutton, and are comprehensive and of high quality at all lengths from 2 to 15 letters.

; '''Less punishing challenge rule'''
: An unsuccessful challenge generally results in a points penalty, typically 5 or 10 points per word or per move, and puts less of a premium on rote dictionary memorization, including of the inconsistencies in the dictionary that both lexica contain, and an arbitrary-seeming boundary between what is valid and what is not resulting from the dictionaries that the lexica are based on being abridged. (The boundary is not actually arbitrary: dictionaries have inclusion criteria based upon citations, etc., but from the player point of view it might as well be.)

; '''More global English'''
: English is a global language, and more of its variations are reflected in Collins, not so much by the number of countries the source dictionaries are from (only the UK is added), but from the overall greater inclusivity.

== What Are the Downsides to Collins? ==

As with pros, we concentrate on points pertinent to the individual player, as opposed to the community as a whole.

; '''It is difficult to play well in both lexica'''
: While one does not have to study many words to play CSW quite well, it could become difficult when playing NWL again to remember which words are only acceptable in CSW. This difficulty of remembering can inhibit the CSW-er's play in NWL because any word that is CSW-only is likely to be challenged off by an NWL player who is not familiar with it. Having a word challenged off is one of the worst things that can happen in a game with respect to optimal play, worse than playing no move at all because your opponent has seen some or all of your letters. While CSW contains more obscure words, simply using the maxim "if it's weird, it's Collins" will lead to many mistakes.

; '''Smaller North American community'''
: While the number of CSW players is growing, the North American community contains far more NWL players, and in many clubs there are no CSW players at all. In tournaments, the fields are often small, with uncertainty in some about whether an event will happen because a minimum quorum of 4 players is needed for rating. If the event does happen, you will more likely encounter the same players frequently, or have to play them multiple times. The CSW field is also dominated by highly rated players who are often motivated to play Collins because of the opportunities for international play. And because the fields are small, usually all players are in a single division. While having many top players may be good or bad depending on your point of view, currently, if you are not a top player, you will likely lose a lot of the games that you play in a CSW tournament.

; '''The challenge rule may be less challenging'''
: Some players like the double-challenge rule and feel that it is an essential part of the game. While there is still a penalty for an incorrect challenge, and there is no reason a CSW game cannot remain double-challenge given the rules, 5 or 10 points per word is a more common de facto standard. This is enough to make you at least pause before challenging, so the aspect of the game embodied by double challenge is not completely lost, but it is not the same decision making process.

; '''CSW is not North American English'''
: CSW reflects a more global usage of the language and as such is not just reflective of the language in the U.S. and Canada. However, this is also true for all of the countries that use CSW when it is considered in relation to their usage of English.

; '''There are [[Obscure Collins words|obscure words in Collins]]'''
: While NWL contains obsolete and archaic words, the CSW contains more of them.

; '''The existence of CSW play splits the U.S. SCRABBLE scene'''
: While the large majority of North American players are NWL, a significant number of top players either play only NWL or only CSW. This divides the top divisions of tournaments and lowers the prestige of winning any particular one. Because the Scrabble community is relatively small, fragmentation in general is bad. There are, however, many other ways in which the scene is fragmented. For example, we have School play with the School lexicon; unsanctioned, recreational club, competitive club and tournament play; online and in-person play; and a long list of variant rules that people like to try. It is part of the strength of the basic game that its many variations appeal to different people. Officially sanctioned CSW play lets us keep players who prefer it to NWL play in the fold, and encourages immigrants and tourists to join our community.

; '''There is no single official Collins dictionary with all the definitions'''
: The published Collins English dictionary does not contain all the words in CSW. This is because some words are only in the North American dictionaries, and some are in the Collins language corpus but not the printed dictionary. However, keep in mind that the U.S. lexicon is also spread over more than one dictionary (5, in fact), and that a companion volume to CSW, the Collins Official SCRABBLE Dictionary, contains short definitions for the 2-9 letter words, in a similar manner to OSPD. The [[Collins links|Collins edition]] of the Zyzzyva word study program likewise contains short definitions, for all word lengths up to 15 letters. Nevertheless, the lack of a coherent published dictionary-standard set of definitions is a notable downside to an official lexicon for a word game.

; '''Existing study may have to be redone'''
: A player who has spent a lot of time becoming expert in NWL is understandably reluctant to undertake the effort again merely to become proficient in another version of a game at which they already were. This is why it is important to note that a player expert in NWL can do well in CSW with a relatively much lower level of study. But there is still work for them to do, and, depending on the study method, it can add up. For example, using "stems" of 6 or 7 letters combined with mnemonics to know which combinations make a bingo will require significant revision because extra letters make bingos (see, e.g., [http://www.math.toronto.edu/jjchew/scrabble/anamonics-dd.html here]).

; '''A Collins player can take advantage of a NWL player'''
: Although as mentioned a NWL player can do well in CSW by learning relatively few words compared to what they learned for NWL, this does mean that an expert Collins player can use their knowledge of the lexicon to take advantage, by, for example, deliberately playing obscure words they know to be CSW only, or setting up and using CSW-only hooks. (For example, your author once played WHOW, then later hooked it to EWHOW for a lot of points, albeit in a rated tournament against another expert player.) This taking advantage is mitigated somewhat by the challenge rule, but penalties for challenging can still add up, and with new hooks the opponent may not even know there is a possible play.

; '''Differing strategy'''
: The relative importance of different aspects of strategy, such as offense versus defense, may change, meaning that those players particularly skilled at one may be disadvantaged. However, these aspects are not publicly well quantified. For more details, see [[How Collins differs]].

<br>Please direct comments about this page to its author, [[Nick Ball]].

Collins updates

2022-02-03T06:47:34Z

CM000457: CSW21 link requires login

This page discusses how often changes are published to the Collins lexicon, and is part of our introduction to [[SOWPODS|Collins (SOWPODS) in North America]]. For brevity, we will refer to the North American and International lexica as NWL and CSW respectively.

== How Often is the Collins Word List Updated? ==

Both the NWL and CSW word lists are updated every few years. There has not been a fixed frequency of updates.

At first glance, this may seem unexpected. After all, if CSW includes lists from both the British and American dictionaries, shouldn’t it be updated twice as often? However, part of the motivation and criteria of publishing CSW is that it specifically includes the NWL. As in North America, the worldwide community wants the frequency of updates to result in a list that is reasonably up-to-date, without constant changes. Therefore, so far, the frequency of updates has been similar.

The current NWL was last updated in 2020. Recent previous editions were published in 2018, 2016, 2014, 2006, and 1998. CSW was updated in 2007, 2012, 2015, and 2019. The current CSW was updated in 2021.

Click [https://scrabbleplayers.org/cgi-bin/doc.pl?did=60 here] for a list of changes in CSW21 (requires NASPA member login).

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

Obscure Collins words

2022-02-03T06:40:03Z

CM000457: Update for CSW21 and ABSP words link

This page discusses how many of the words in the Collins lexicon seem obscure to [[NWL]] players, and is part of our introduction to [[SOWPODS|Collins (SOWPODS) in North America]]. For brevity, we will refer to the North American and International lexica as NWL and CSW respectively.

== Are All Collins Words Obscure, Obsolete, Foreign, etc.? ==

The short answer is mostly not, at least no more obscure than already makes up the majority of the NWL.

One must be careful to avoid a biased viewpoint, because when viewing the words that are CSW-only, one is not viewing the CSW itself, but just that part of it that contains the words not in the NWL. These are bound to be somewhat obscure, because if they were common everyday words widely used in English they would already be in the NWL.

Breaking down the list of CSW-only words into categories by meaning shows that a significant majority of the new words that are introduced are further examples of the kinds of words that already make up the NWL, such as animals, currency, minerals, and so on. Because the Scrabble lexica (both NWL and CSW) are based on single-volume abridged dictionaries, and not the full unabridged versions, such as Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, or the Oxford English Dictionary, they in fact really contain only a small fraction of the totality of English words. It is thus not surprising they that do not entirely overlap.

There are some differences: CSW has more obsolete and archaic words. They are not unique to CSW (NWL has perhaps 1,000 already), but there are certainly more. There are also more dialect words, particularly Scots, a result of the word source prior to Collins, The Chambers Dictionary, being based in Scotland, and its words being incorporated into the Collins Corpus. There are also significant numbers of words from countries where English is common, such as Australia, South Africa, and India. Ultimately, the ideal content of a word list is somewhat subjective.

The following list shows CSW-only words broken down into categories to show that a significant fraction are parts of categories that would not seem unreasonable to include in a word list, such as animals, food, and so on.

Note:

* Words do not appear in more than one category, so those not under ‘obsolete’, ‘archaic’, etc. are not obsolete or archaic
* The list was compiled manually, and so is not guaranteed complete
* The list was compiled from an older edition of CSW than CSW21, but the numbers will not have changed by large amounts so the list remains illustrative

{|
!Category|Number of Words
|-
|-
|Abbreviations
|86
|-
|Animals
|523
|-
|Archaic
|164
|-
|Australia
|112
|-
|Chemicals/minerals
|141
|-
|Clothing/fashion
|95
|-
|Computing
|32
|-
|Currency
|36
|-
|Dialect
|177
|-
|‘er’ nouns
|11
|-
|Food/Drink
|200
|-
|France
|112
|-
|Geography/geology
|87
|-
|Germany
|15
|-
|Heraldry
|44
|-
|India
|132
|-
|Interjections
|43
|-
|Irregular inflections
|345
|-
|Ireland
|36
|-
|Italy
|28
|-
|Japan
|21
|-
|Language
|51
|-
|Latin
|13
|-
|Law
|52
|-
|Mathematical
|22
|-
|Medical/anatomical
|153
|-
|Milton
|26
|-
|Music
|120
|-
|New Zealand
|122
|-
|Obsolete
|388
|-
|Other
|50
|-
|Other adjective
|383
|-
|Other -ier -iest adjective
|154
|-
|Other noun
|1269
|-
|Other verb
|573
|-
|Plants
|321
|-
|Religious/spiritual
|160
|-
|South Africa
|66
|-
|Scots
|573
|-
|Shakespeare
|207
|-
|Slang
|48
|-
|Spenser
|307
|-
|Sports/games
|77
|-
|Units
|41
|-
|USA
|12
|-
|Welsh
|7
|-
!Total
!635
|}

Aside from this list, an excellent resource for further lists of words by categories is at the [https://www.absp.org.uk Association of British Scrabble Players] website under their Words section. These lists, compiled by David Sutton, cover the full range of CSW words from 2-15 letters, with useful one-line definitions throughout.

The lists mark words new to CSW19 versus the previous edition, CSW15. These markings remain up-to-date since CSW21 contained no additions versus CSW19, but there is no differentiation between CSW and NWL words.

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

Important Collins words

2022-02-03T06:31:26Z

CM000457: Update cheat sheet links to CSW21 version from CSW15

This page describes which Collins-only words are important for an [[NWL]] player to learn, and is part of our introduction to [[SOWPODS|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

<br>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
21-30: DZO VAX AME GIO TEX ONY OBO WAI ZOL YEX
...

<br>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 VAX ...
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 [[https://blog.collinsdictionary.com/scrabble/scrabble-tools/ Collins Zyzzyva]] word study program.

== Collins Cheat Sheet ==

We have incorporated the above into a [[Media:Collins_Cheat_Sheet_CSW21_Part_1_of_2.pdf|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 [http://www.cross-tables.com/cs 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 [[Media:Collins_Cheat_Sheet_CSW21_Part_2_of_2.pdf|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]].

File:Collins Cheat Sheet CSW21 Part 2 of 2.pdf

2022-02-03T06:30:24Z

CM000457: Update CSW15 cheat sheet part 2 of 2 to CSW21

Update CSW15 cheat sheet part 2 of 2 to CSW21

File:Collins Cheat Sheet CSW21 Part 1 of 2.pdf

2022-02-03T06:29:44Z

CM000457: Update CSW15 cheat sheet part 1 of 2 to CSW21

Update CSW15 cheat sheet part 1 of 2 to CSW21

Important Collins words

2022-02-03T06:09:01Z

CM000457: Update to CSW21

This page describes which Collins-only words are important for an [[NWL]] player to learn, and is part of our introduction to [[SOWPODS|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

<br>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
21-30: DZO VAX AME GIO TEX ONY OBO WAI ZOL YEX
...

<br>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 VAX ...
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 [[https://blog.collinsdictionary.com/scrabble/scrabble-tools/ Collins Zyzzyva]] word study program.

== Collins Cheat Sheet ==

We have incorporated the above into a [[Media:Collins_cheat_sheet_part_1.pdf|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 [http://www.cross-tables.com/cs 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 [[Media:Collins_cheat_sheet_part_2.pdf|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]].

How Collins differs

2022-02-03T00:08:19Z

CM000457: Update for CSW21

This page describes '''how Collins differs''' from [[NASPA_Word_List|NWL]] as a playing lexicon, and is part of our introduction to [[SOWPODS|Collins (SOWPODS) in North America]]. For brevity, we will refer to the North American and International lexica, NWL2020 and CSW21, as NWL and CSW respectively.

== Fundamentals ==

Fundamentally, the game does not change. It is still the same Scrabble experience, as enjoyed by many worldwide. The overall game, and the basic strategy, such as finding a good score plus rack leave, are not changed by moving from NWL to CSW. In other words, it will still feel like the same game, just one with more words. If one were handing out a sheet of tips for new players, the same sheet could be handed out for CSW as it has been for NWL. There is a far greater difference between the kitchen table and the club than there is between the two lexica.

So the differences are not in the fundamentals, but in the details. The extra words are the most noticeable, and because there are so many of them, you will use them, particularly the short ones.

== Challenge rule ==

After the words, the next biggest difference is the challenge rule: CSW games are generally not played to double-challenge, but with a points penalty. This is not intrinsic to the lexicon (the international [[WESPA]] rules do in fact allow double challenge, if desired), but has emerged as the de facto standard between no penalty at all, as played in Britain, and loss of a turn. In looking at the differences in more detail, we thus start with the challenge rule. The words are described in [[Important Collins words]].

The altered challenge [[Rules|rule]] compared to the North American double-challenge rule is as follows:

* If your opponent makes a play, you challenge, and their play is good, instead of losing your turn, the opponent gains points
* Typically, this is 5 or 10 points per word challenged
* After you have made an unsuccessful challenge, it is still your turn
* If you challenge correctly, the rule is the same as North America: the opponent loses their turn and their incorrect play is removed from the board
* The determination of move acceptability is done in the usual way: the play is ruled either acceptable or not, regardless of the number of words challenged. Which individual words are good or bad is not revealed

<br>So if you, say, challenge two words, the play is ruled acceptable, and the penalty is 10 points per word, the opponent gets an extra 20 points, but it is still your turn.

Note, however, that there is a subtlety. Like North American double-challenge, the rule still applies on the final move. But, unlike double-challenge, the penalty still has an effect (you cannot lose a turn if the opponent has played out because there are no more turns). So the free challenge when the opponent plays out is lost. The opponent can, therefore, still gain the penalty of 5, 10, etc., points if you challenge incorrectly, which something to keep in mind if it is a close game.

It is not yet clear whether North American CSW games will ultimately end up as penalty rather than double challenge, but the current norm is a 5 or 10 point penalty.

It is also worth noting that with online play another form of challenge rule has become more popular: void challenge. In this form, the user is not allowed by the software to play an invalid word, and can check the validity of words before they make their play. This form of challenge rule is unaffected by which lexicon is used.

== More choices of plays ==

Generally, there will be more choices for each play in CSW. The increased number of 2-3 letter words and hooks means there are often more possibilities to make overlapping plays, or play a bingo. While in some situations increased hooks can make it harder to block the board, in other situations increased overlaps can make it easier to play without creating openings: while a high scoring open game can thus be played, this style of play is not forced upon the player, because board areas with a dense covering of words with few openings can be created.

A consequence of the extra choice of moves is that there may be less time to think about each individual play than in NWL, which could be said to place a higher premium on play finding than on the strategic merits of individual moves versus each other. However, the number of possible plays and scope for strategic thought about each one vastly outweighs what can actually be achieved by any human player in a real game situation in either lexicon. So the perceived balance between the two things ultimately comes down to personal preference.

Some of the most significant sources of extra word choices are:

;'''Two letter words'''
: There are 20 extra two letter words in CSW21: CH, DI, EA, EE, FY, GU, IO, JA, KO, KY, NY, OB, OO, OU, ST, UG, UR, YU, ZE, and ZO. Note that the letter C therefore now has a two letter word, CH, but there are still no two letter words containing a V.
;'''High-scorers'''
: JA, ZE, ZO, and more threes, such as JAI, QIN, EXO, and ZEA, mean there is more potential for a 50- or 60-point J, Q, X or Z play. While sometimes your opponent might get these, in a game it is more likely to even out because they occur more often: your opponent may get one, then you get one too.
;'''Vowel dumps'''
: Short words with numerous vowels have a greater variety, including such examples as AIA, AUA, AUE, and EUOI.
;'''Bingos'''
: There will be a playable bingo more often. Some high probability sets of letters that make no words in TWL now make a playable word, such as OTARINE, ETAERIO, ROASTIE, and ORIGANE. Of course, many combinations, such as ADEILNR or ADEILNT, still make no words.
;'''Plurals'''
: CSW contains both more words and more meanings, so some words in NWL that do not take an S now do, e.g., ATS, OIS, AVAS, FEWS.
;'''Comparatives and superlatives'''
: CSW is more generous in allowing -er -est or -ier -iest inflections, e.g., FAVE, FIE, FOU, GEY, OORIE, or QUARE make FAVER, OORIEST, etc. Some of these are now-allowed comparatives/superlatives, others are from added meanings.
;'''Gerunds'''
: A particularly large addition is that more -INGS words are good. Some of the perhaps surprising omissions from NWL, such as GRADINGS, are good in CSW.
;'''Other inflections'''
: Other extra inflections follow similarly, e.g., some TWL words that are adjectives or nouns in NWL become nouns or verbs in CSW.

<br>For more on the words, see [[Important Collins words]].

== Fewer exchanges ==

For the same reason that there are more choices, it is also usually more feasible to be able to make a play rather than be forced to exchange. The increased number of two letter words and other short words such as vowel dumps often mean that there is a play that is better than exchanging, even if it only scores 10–20 points. Often this is because the play uses the same or similar tiles to what would have been exchanged.

== Can catch up from behind ==

In an NWL game, if a player bingos a couple of times quickly early in the game, their strategy is often simply to close down the board and make it difficult for the opponent to catch up. While the same block-when-ahead principle applies to CSW, because there are more words, it is often possible to create more chances to catch up again, through the increased numbers of possibilities for creating hooks, and the extra 2-letter words making it more likely that a bingo lane is available. Thus, the game is rarely “won” after just a few moves.

A converse to this is that sometimes the opponent can run away to a big score with many bingos, and you are powerless to stop them. Those who have played CSW against a top level computer player can attest to this!

== Higher game score ==

Game scores are higher, although not by as much as one might expect. A top-level player, or the computer, will average about 425 points a game in NWL against an equally matched opponent. In CSW, they will average about 450. This is approximately a 6% difference, or about 2 points more per move. Of course, in games with unequal opposition, scores can be lower or higher in either lexicon.

== Harder to play invalid words ==

The challenge rule, described at the start of this page, generally means that it is harder to play and get away with invalid words (phoneys). In particular, an expert player cannot just put down anything against a novice, because the novice can still challenge without risking the loss of their turn. Therefore, for a new CSW player facing an expert, this “bluffing” aspect is not as intimidating as under double challenge. However, experience shows that the non-double-challenge rule is by no means trivial: many phoneys can and do still get played, and point penalties from lost challenges can alter the game outcome. The purpose of the penalty is to retain the stop-and-think aspect of the double challenge, but to keep the onus on the player making the move to play valid words, because if you play a phoney and it is challenged, you do still lose your turn.

(In fact, even with free challenge, as in Britain, there is still the potential penalty of loss of one's own confidence for challenging valid words, especially if done several times in a game.)

== Balance between defense and offense is shifted ==

There is a prevailing opinion that CSW encourages a more offensive rather than defensive playing style, favoring word finding rather than considering the strategic merits of different moves. This is because it generally seems easier to just keep scoring, with less regard for board position, or what the opponent does. However, it is not clear exactly to what extent this is really the case, compared to simply playing the same open style in NWL for the majority of the game. Given the prevailing opinion, it seems likely to have some truth to it, but little empirical or quantitative evidence has been presented. Both CSW and NWL provide rich strategical possibilities, far more than anyone can analyze completely during the course of a game, for a variety of playing styles.

== Overall ==

While playing CSW is not identical to playing NWL, the game as known and loved by thousands of tournament players across North America is not fundamentally changed by playing CSW.

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

SOWPODS

2022-02-02T23:36:39Z

CM000457: Update for CSW21

The '''Collins Scrabble Words''' ('''CSW'''), formerly known as the '''SOWPODS''' lexicon, is a word list first published in 2007 by Collins, and updated in 2012, 2015, 2019, and 2021. NASPA has sanctioned official games played in the CSW lexicon in a separate [[SOWPODS rating system|CSW rating system]] since January 2010. The 2012 edition was in effect until August 31, 2015; the 2015 edition took effect on September 1, 2015; the 2019 edition took effect on July 1, 2019. The 2021 edition took effect on December 1, 2021.


English-language Scrabble as a whole is played to two lexica, depending on country. Currently, approximately 50 countries use CSW, and 3 use predominantly the [[NASPA Word List]] ('''NWL'''), the North American lexicon), with some CSW play. These countries are Canada, Israel, and the United States.


== Coinage ==

The name “SOWPODS” was coined as an anagram of OSW+OSPD, the names of the two lexicons (the British Official Scrabble Words and the American Official SCRABBLE Players Dictionary) that were originally merged to form SOWPODS. The SOWPODS word list is currently edited by the [[WESPA]] Dictionary Committee; comments concerning the list should be directed to the NASPA [[International Committee]]. The CSW word list contains almost all of the words found in the [[NASPA Word List]], as well as a large number of other English words from around the world.

== More information ==

The purpose of these webpages is to provide informative and, hopefully, interesting information to those North American tournament and club players who are curious about trying out the CSW game. They do not, therefore, aim to introduce Scrabble play as a whole, but those parts of it that change if one moves from playing NWL to playing CSW. Thus, we start with how the game differs from NWL, introduce the most useful extra words to know, address some commonly asked questions and concerns, then describe the current CSW scene as it is evolving in North America. Finally, we present links to further resources outside of this wiki.

The sections below follow on from each other in order, but each can be read on its own.

* [[How Collins differs]]
* [[Important Collins words]]
* [[Obscure Collins words]]
* [[Collins updates]]
* [[Collins pros and cons]]
* [[Collins tournaments and ratings]]
* [[Try it]]
* [[Collins links]]

<br>Please direct comments about this page to its author, [[Nick Ball]].

Collins pros and cons

2022-01-11T23:14:45Z

CM000457: Add content, replacing "Collins downsides" page

This page discusses the pros and cons to playing using the Collins lexicon, and is part of our introduction to [[SOWPODS|Collins (SOWPODS) in North America]]. For brevity, we will refer to the North American and International lexica as NWL and CSW respectively.

While the cons are certainly not intended to discourage anyone from playing CSW, it is useful to be aware of them before committing to learning and playing the CSW game.

The items here are largely given from the North American perspective, as this is the dominant community in English language Scrabble that does not use Collins already.

Some of the arguments are also the converse of the "cons" section below, which was written first. Some may not be given explicitly in both directions in both sections.

== What Are the Upsides to Collins? ==

Many of these arguments are well-rehearsed, having been advocated by some players since the 1980s, and after the first World Championships in 1991, played then and ever since to SOWPODS and later CSW.

The upsides of Collins for the individual can blend into general arguments for the community as a whole to play to one English language word list instead of 2, but here we focus on the pro- arguments at an individual level.

; '''Ability to play with the world community'''
: To most of the world, NWL Scrabble is Scrabble with about 25% of the words not allowed, with no memorizable pattern. It is thus inaccessible to most of them and consequently played little. Collins opens up the world English language Scrabble community to the NWL player that would otherwise largely be unseen. This is especially relevant now that online play has become more prevalent after COVID-19.

; '''More words allowed'''
: Many words in NWL that players are surprised are invalid are allowed in Collins. Greater inclusivity gives better lexicon consistency in some areas, such as -INGS and -ISE vs. -IZE words, although the overall lexicon integrity is not necessarily any better, and is in some ways worse because more obsolete words are present.

; '''More choices of plays'''
: Similar to more words, a typical Collins move has more play choices. Depending on personal preference between play-finding and strategically selecting between found play choices, this may be good or bad, but most players prefer things such as the bingo on their rack to be playable than not.

; '''Better Zyzzyva definitions'''
: The Collins definitions in Zyzzyva benefit from the extensive work over many years of former UK dictionary committee David Sutton, and are comprehensive and of high quality at all lengths from 2 to 15 letters.

; '''Less punishing challenge rule'''
: An unsuccessful challenge generally results in a points penalty, typically 5 or 10 points per word or per move, and puts less of a premium on rote dictionary memorization, including of the inconsistencies in the dictionary that both lexica contain, and an arbitrary-seeming boundary between what is valid and what is not resulting from the dictionaries that the lexica are based on being abridged. (The boundary is not actually arbitrary: dictionaries have inclusion criteria based upon citations, etc., but from the player point of view it might as well be.)

; '''More global English'''
: English is a global language, and more of its variations are reflected in Collins, not so much by the number of countries the source dictionaries are from (only the UK is added), but from the overall greater inclusivity.

== What Are the Downsides to Collins? ==

; '''It is difficult to play well in both lexica'''
: While one does not have to study many words to play CSW quite well, it could become difficult when playing NWL again to remember which words are only acceptable in CSW. This difficulty of remembering can inhibit the CSW-er's play in NWL because any word that is CSW-only is likely to be challenged off by a nWL player who is not familiar with it. Having a word challenged off is one of the worst things that can happen in a game with respect to optimal play. And while CSW contains more obscure words, simply using the maxim "if it's weird, it's Collins" will lead to many mistakes.

; '''Smaller North American community'''
: While the number of CSW players is growing, the North American community contains far more NWL players, and in many clubs there are no CSW players at all. In tournaments, the fields are often small, with uncertainty about whether an event will happen because a minimum quorum of 4 is needed for rating. If the event does happen, you will more likely encounter the same players frequently, or have to play them multiple times. The CSW field is also dominated by highly rated players who are often motivated to play Collins because of the opportunities for international play. And because the fields are small, usually all players are in a single division. While having many top players may be good or bad depending on your point of view, if you are not a top player, you will likely play and lose a lot of games in CSW.

; '''The challenge rule may be less challenging'''
: Some players like the double-challenge rule and feel that it is an essential part of the game. While there is still a penalty for an incorrect challenge, and there is no reason a CSW game cannot remain double-challenge given the rules, 5 or 10 points per word is a more common de facto standard. This is enough to make you at least pause before challenging, so the aspect of the game embodied by double challenge is not completely lost, but it is not the same decision making process.

; '''CSW is not North American English'''
: CSW reflects a more global usage of the language and as such is not just reflective of the language in the U.S. and Canada. However, this is also true for all of the countries that use CSW when it is considered in relation to their usage of English.

; '''There are [[Obscure Collins words|obscure words in Collins]]'''
: While NWL contains obsolete and archaic words, the CSW contains more of them.

; '''The existence of CSW play splits the U.S. SCRABBLE scene'''
: While the large majority of North American players are NWL, a significant number of top players either play only TWL or only CSW. This divides the top divisions of tournaments and lowers the prestige of winning any particular one. Because the Scrabble community is relatively small, fragmentation in general is bad. There are, however, many other ways in which the scene is fragmented. For example, we have School play with the School lexicon; unsanctioned, recreational club, competitive club and tournament play; online and in-person play; and a long list of variant rules that people like to try. It is part of the strength of the basic game that its many variations appeal to different people. Officially sanctioned CSW play lets us keep players who prefer it to NWL play in the fold, and encourages immigrants and tourists to join our community.

; '''There is no single official Collins dictionary with all the definitions'''
: The published Collins English dictionary does not contain all the words in CSW. This is because some words are only in the North American dictionaries, and some are in the Collins language corpus but not the printed dictionary. However, keep in mind that the U.S. lexicon is also spread over more than one dictionary (5, in fact), and that a companion volume to CSW, the Collins Official SCRABBLE Dictionary, contains short definitions for the 2-9 letter words, in a similar manner to OSPD. The [[Collins links|Collins edition]] of the Zyzzyva word study program likewise contains short definitions, for all word lengths up to 15 letters. Nevertheless, the lack of a coherent published dictionary-standard set of definitions is a notable downside to an official lexicon for a word game.

; '''Existing study may have to be redone'''
: A player who has spent a lot of time becoming expert in NWL is understandably reluctant to undertake the effort again merely to become proficient in a game at which they are already proficient. This is why it is important to note that a player expert in NWL can do well in CSW with a relatively much lower level of study. But there is still work for them to do, and, depending on the study method, it can add up. For example, using "stems" of 6 or 7 letters combined with mnemonics to know which combinations make a bingo will require significant revision because extra letters make bingos (see, e.g., [http://www.math.toronto.edu/jjchew/scrabble/anamonics-dd.html here]).

; '''A Collins player can take advantage of a NWL player'''
: Although as mentioned a NWL player can do well in CSW by learning relatively few words compared to what they learned for NWL, this does mean that an expert Collins player can use their knowledge of the lexicon to take advantage, by, for example, deliberately playing obscure words they know to be CSW only, or setting up and using CSW-only hooks. (For example, your author once played WHOW, then later hooked it to EWHOW for a lot of points, albeit in a rated tournament against another expert player.) This taking advantage is mitigated somewhat by the challenge rule, but penalties for challenging can still add up, and with hooks the opponent may not even know there is a possible play.

; '''Differing strategy'''
: The relative importance of different aspects of strategy, such as offense versus defense, may change, meaning that those players particularly skilled at one may be disadvantaged. However, these aspects are not publicly well quantified. For more details, see [[How Collins differs]].

<br>Please direct comments about this page to its author, [[Nick Ball]].

SOWPODS

2022-01-11T05:34:15Z

CM000457: Change "downsides" subpage name to "pros and cons"

The '''Collins Scrabble Words''' ('''CSW'''), formerly known as the '''SOWPODS''' lexicon, is a word list first published in 2007 by Collins, and updated in 2012, 2015, 2019, and 2021. NASPA has sanctioned official games played in the CSW lexicon in a separate [[SOWPODS rating system|CSW rating system]] since January 2010. The 2012 edition was in effect until August 31, 2015; the 2015 edition took effect on September 1, 2015; the 2019 edition took effect on July 1, 2019. The 2021 edition took effect on December 1, 2021.


English-language Scrabble as a whole is played to two lexica, depending on country. Currently, 49 countries use CSW, and 3 use predominantly the [[NASPA Word List]], the North American lexicon), with some CSW play. These countries are Canada, Israel, and the United States.


== Coinage ==

The name “SOWPODS” was coined as an anagram of OSW+OSPD, the names of the two lexicons (the British Official Scrabble Words and the American Official SCRABBLE Players Dictionary) that were originally merged to form SOWPODS. The SOWPODS word list is currently edited by the [[WESPA]] Dictionary Committee; comments concerning the list should be directed to the NASPA [[International Committee]]. The CSW word list contains almost all of the words found in [[OTCWL|OTCWL16]], as well as a large number of other English words from around the world.

== More information ==

The purpose of these webpages is to provide informative and, hopefully, interesting information to those North American tournament and club players who are curious about trying out the CSW game. They do not, therefore, aim to introduce Scrabble play as a whole, but those parts of it that change if one moves from playing NWL to playing CSW. Thus, we start with how the game differs from NWL, introduce the most useful extra words to know, address some commonly asked questions and concerns, then describe the current CSW scene as it is evolving in North America. Finally, we present links to further resources outside of this wiki.

The sections below follow on from each other in order, but each can be read on its own.

* [[How Collins differs]]
* [[Important Collins words]]
* [[Obscure Collins words]]
* [[Collins updates]]
* [[Collins pros and cons]]
* [[Collins tournaments and ratings]]
* [[Try it]]
* [[Collins links]]

<br>Please direct comments about this page to its author, [[Nick Ball]].

[1] List of CSW countries derived from players with an active international rating at http://www.wespa.org/aardvark/cgi-bin/rating.cgi . We are happy to add any countries omitted by this method.