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This page describes which Collins-only words are important for a TWL player to learn, and is part of our introduction to Collins (SOWPODS) in North America.
Technically, of course, you don’t need to learn anything!
In practice, of course, there are some useful basic words to start with.
Because CSW contains all the TWL words, you can continue to play the same game, and anything that was good in TWL remains good. And because the fundamentals of the game have not changed, the kinds of words that are the most useful to study in TWL 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 how many words are there? In total, the TWL contains 178,691 words. CSW, meanwhile, contains 267,750. About half of these are 9–15 letters, and while some 9s can be useful, the vast majority (about 98%) of the gain is with the 2–8s. TWL contains 83,667 of these, while CSW has 30,908 more. This means that, for approximately every 3 TWL words, there is an extra CSW word.
However, it is likely that you didn’t start out playing TWL with the intention of learning 178,691 words. Likewise, you can play a good CSW game without needing anything like the extra 30,908 2–8s that are actually present. In fact, you can play a decent game with just the 2s and 3s. Sounds unlikely? Well, the thing to remember of course is that 'every word you know from TWL is still valid'! So, as we have already seen that three quarters of the words are TWL, you are already three quarters of the way there. And in many cases, even more than this, because there will be a choice of moves.
So, what should you actually study? Here are some lists. In some cases we’ve presented just the most useful words from a list, but you can see the full list by following the link in the heading.
Start with the 2s. There are 23 of these:
CH DA DI EA EE FY GI GU IO JA KO KY NY OB OO OU PO ST TE UG UR YU ZO
While that’s not too many, you probably won’t remember them all straightaway (I’ve played in the Worlds, and I certainly didn’t remember the 2s in one sitting!) They’ll just become a natural part of the game over time.
Following the 2s, there are 277 3s. The most useful 3s are:
EXO AIA WOX ZEX REZ BEZ WOF WAI OOF ZHO JAI ZEA JIZ TIX AUA RIZ HOX DZO ZEL FAW IWI WEX YEX OYE NOX AUE UEY TEX LUZ AYU
Obviously, like in TWL, you don’t have to be 100% on all the 3s before continuing! While ZIZ may come in handy some day, the chances are, various 4s and bingos will come up first.
The next most useful words are the same as in TWL: 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 FAUVE or...), high probability bingos, dump-words such as 4s with 2 Is, and, of course, words with Q but no U.
DIVI DIXI FIFI FINI MIHI HIOI WILI SIMI PIPI SIRI ISIT PUDU WUDU HUHU KUKU PUKU KUTU KUZU PULU ZULU RURU SUSU UTUS YUZU
INQILAB -s QASIDA -s TALAQ -s
MUQADDAM -s QAWWAL -s TSADDIQ -s
NIQAB -s QAWWALI -s TSADDIQIM
QABALISM -s QIBLA -s TZADDIQ -s
QABALIST -s QIGONG -s TZADDIQIM
QABALISTIC QINGHAOSU -s WAQF -s
QAIMAQAM -s QORMA -s YAQONA -s
QALAMDAN -s QWERTIES
The basics above are more than enough for a good CSW game. But you may decide you enjoy it, and wish to go further.
The major 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” (think back to the last dictionary update, if you have been playing that long) is not too bad, remembering a word and remembering which lexicon it is in are not the same thing, especially over a period of time. Those CSW words may come back to haunt you a few months down the line!
But nevertheless, some people have high ratings at both TWL and CSW, and one can get to quite a high standard quite quickly.
Chosen correctly, it can be shown that learning the top XX% of the words when ordered by playability is equivalent to learning XX% of all the words. So learning the top XXXX from CSW is effectively learning XX% of that lexicon. This top XX% can be accessed by playability in Zyzzyva.
I have incorporated the above into a Cheat Sheet, that is designed to be used by new-to, or occasional player of, CSW. It resembles the NSA’s “Important Words to Raise Your Score” sheet that was given to new members, except that it concentrates in CSW words. Currently, it is not available for download, because it is a bit too much like just making available a published word list, but NASPA may make the sheet available. I will also send it on request: it’s just a PDF file.
There is also a Cheat Sheet Part 2, which contains a useful array of the hooks to CSW 2s, and the full set of CSW 4s.
For those who literally want all the extra CSW words, check out Bob’s British Bible.
Finally, while the lists above are nice, is there any word study software for CSW? Well, the best answer is the same as for TWL: Zyzzyva. This can easily be set up to supply the regular set of TWL words, and, in addition, the CSW words. The latter can be marked with a # sign to distinguish them, and searches can be conducted so that only the CSW words are returned, or, if you want to leave them, the CSW words can be suppressed.
To set Zyzzyva up with CSW, go to Zyzzyva→Preferences, select “General’ in the left navigation bar in the resulting pop-up window, check the box “Load Lexicons’ if it is not checked, and click on Edit. In the “Select Lexicons’ window, click the toggle button in the leftmost column (“Default”) that is next to CSW. The button one to the right should then be checked, but grayed out. Then, check the box in the second column (“Load”) next to “OWL2+LWL”. Do not check any of the other boxes, which should all be empty. Finally, click OK. The program may need to rebuild the database, which will take a few minutes. The settings as given are telling Zyzzyva to be CSW by default, but to remember which words are CSW-only, i.e., still good in TWL. You can get at just TWL by requiring “In Lexicon’ TWL when searching, or ignoring the words with a # mark.
If the CSW words are not already marked by a #, go to Zyzzyva→Preferences, click on “Word Tables’ on the nav-bar, and edit accordingly.
If this fails (I haven’t run through it myself, because my copy is already set to CSW), or you need more information, please check out the Zyzzyva site, or the Yahoo Groups zyzzyva-users email list, because they know a lot more about it that I do!
Comments concerning this page may be directed to Nick Ball.
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