Latest revision as of 22:10, 23 August 2016

The Long List (LL) was the official word reference for longer words until these were merged into OTCWL. What follows is a historical description of this word list, written when it was still current.

The Long List is an official word list for NASPA-sanctioned club and tournament play, and contains all acceptable words of ten or more letters which are not listed (as inflections) in the reference for shorter words, the Official Tournament and Club Word List. The LL is edited by the Dictionary Committee, published by Merriam-Webster and available only from Word Gear.

The word list is available from this site for personal, noncommercial use as a 600K download with MD5 digest (authentication) code 2f218ad494145171c29b3fdf9cf45993. The availability of the word list as a download is not meant to suggest that any copy of the list is acceptable for use in word adjudication. For reasons of quality control, tournament and club directors must use the officially printed edition.

This word list was first made available online as a committee draft in late 2002, accompanied by the following announcement:

This proposed 10-15 letter word list was compiled using the entries from Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition. Special attention was given to the proper inflections for words that were irregular plurals, words on undefined lists (“sublists” such as words beginning with ANTI-, RE-, OVER-, OUT-, UN, etc.), entries that were out of normal alphabetical order, and words labeled as “called also” but not given their own separate entries. Rulings on inflections of many questionable words and on all “sublist” words were received from a senior editor at Merriam-Webster.

Even though there was much careful checking of the 10–15 letter words that met the criteria for acceptability in club and tournament play it is possible that omissions and errors could have occurred. We would like to solicit from the NSA membership any instances of such errors or omissions that you may discover.

This provisional list will be available for inspection until at least January 1, 2003. During that time NSA members are welcome to send examples of any words that are erroneously listed or that were missed and that should be on the list. While you are always free to contact any member of the Dictionary Committee regarding matters pertaining to the official word lists for club and tournament play, for purposes of informing us of corrections to the provisional 10-15 letter list please send your messages to the following email address which is being used exclusively for this purpose:

jpate@cheerful.com

We want the 10–15 letter list, when it is officially adopted, to be as accurate as possible so we welcome your help in this endeavor.

This led to to two updates to the draft list. On December 15, 2002, 333 words which were already listed in OTCWL were deleted, thanks to a large number of players who pointed out the problem, the first of whom was Mitch Bayersdorfer. On March 30, 2003, Richard Buck pointed out that the list erroneously included ENCEPHALOMYO and KERATOCONJUN, which were removed.