Why Is The Scrabble Dictionary SO WEIRD?

[@Ascension721]

I love the two comments from people questioning the validity of 'Or' and 'We'

[@kitsovereign4127]

Oh my god, I thought "ab" was the biggest whopper. I missed those on first watch, that's amazing.

[@rennoc6478]

Also some onomatopia like eh

[@agitated_cat]

​@@rennoc6478i can see "eh" being debatable because its not exactly a word with a set definition, rather just a noise that we make. "or" and "we" are literally words with definitions in the English language that are also extremely common in everyday talk, so people saying it's not a word is hilarious

[@rennoc6478]

@@agitated_cat eh, used to represent a sound made in speech in a variety of situations, in particular to ask for something to be repeated or explained or to elicit agreement. That being put aside I do see your point

[@Emile.gorgonZola]

@@agitated_cateh does have a set definition. Onomatopoeia is different in different languages

[@anonvideo738]

Im surprised scrabble players havent conspired to spread words a Q in them. If every scrabble player starts greeting people with Qello, instead of hello, it might take off and there will be another valid Q word.

[@eric-smith-egg]

Qello

[@ApriiSR]

you could even shorten it to qi!

[@wanderer15]

Maybe QT as in "cutie" needs to get in!

[@anonvideo738]

@@wanderer15 If Za is legal, QT should be legal.

[@cptjack42]

Someday, we will make Quone a real word

[@Jess-uk8bj]

When I get frustrated over these things, it's less "This word is made up" and more "This archaic dialectal word is valid but common modern ones aren't." Seriously, why can't I play SHART yet smh

[@pjet8042]

You'd probably only be able to play that word in a tournament. The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary that you can buy in stores omits words they have deemed offensive, i.e. racist, scatalogical, etc. Most online/app versions of Scrabble will be in line with that. However in tournament play, anything goes.

[@MewtwoStruckBack]

@@pjet8042Not that this would likely happen because of the distribution of tiles and optimal play, but could you imagine if someone won a tournament by playing the N word as their final move?

[@pjet8042]

@@MewtwoStruckBack - hopefully they'd be able to play GINGER instead...

[@MewtwoStruckBack]

@@pjet8042 But what would be the fun in that? It’d be for the shock value

[@henrywalkins1353]

@@pjet8042 Although unlikely There are certain layouts that allow one rather than the other. I'll provide a hypothetical clean board example only relying on one word. Nig, and Gin. Nig meaning to dress (stone) with a sharp-pointed hammer and gin being alcohol. So, it is possible for someone to be forced to play an offensive word, because of the current state of the board. TBF, I'd probably just take the L on that one.

[@andrewadams530]

I could literally watch an entire video, no matter the length, where you just go over every 2 non standard 2 letter word and their definitions. I find them extremely fascinating. Or should I say chould watch a video.

[@Flush333]

Oh my god, I could make it an all-day event if I needed to

[@aperson1]

in north american scrabble: aa: a type of lava distinguished as being very rough and uneven ab: short for the abdominal muscle ad: short for advertisement ae: archaic version of a/an ag: short for agriculture ah: a sigh or exclamation ai: a three-toed sloth al: a tree in east india am: first person singular of "to be" an: one of something ar: the letter R as: to compare something at: to be somewhere aw: disappointment ax: an axe ay: archaic form of "aye" ba: the soul in egyptian mythology be: to, well, be bi: short for bisexual bo: a pal by: to be responsible for/the cause of something da: short for dad de: of/from (in a name) such as Charles de Gaulle do: to make something happen ed: short for education ef: the letter F eh: an exclamation el: short for an elevated train em: the letter M en: the letter N er: an exclamation of hesitation or confusion es: the letter S et: archaic past tense of eat ew: exclamation of disgust ex: to cross out/a previous relationship fa: the fourth note of a music scale fe: a hebrew letter gi: a suit worn for martial arts go: to move somewhere or start doing something/a board game ha: an exclamation of surprise or triumph/laughter he: referring to a male hi: greeting ho: an exclamation of surprise id: the instinctual, impulsive part of your psyche if: a conditional/possibility in: to be within something is: singular third person of (to be) it: referring to an inanimate object jo: a sweetheart ka: the spiritual self of a human in egyptian mythology ki: alternate spelling of qi la: to sing/the sixth note on a musical scale li: a chinese unit of distance lo: an exclamation of surprise or to attract attention ma: short for mother me: first person singular mi: third note on a musical scale mm: an exclamation of acknowledgement or satisfaction mo: short for a moment mu: a letter of the greek alphabet my: posessive singular na: slang for no ne: name born with no: negative nu: a letter of the greek alphabet od: a hypothetical force of natural power oe: a whirlwind from the faroe islands of: coming from oh: an exclamation of surprise oi: an exclamation for attention ok: confirmation om: a mantra on: above op: abstract art or: otherwise os: a bone ow: an exclamation of pain ox: an animal oy: an exclamation pa: father pe: a letter of the hebrew alphabet pi: a letter of the greek alphabet po: a chamber pot qi: vital force of life in chinese mythology re: second tone of a musical scale sh: used to urge silence si: alternative seventh tone on a musical scale so: a conjunction; therefore ta: an expression of gratitude te: i have no idea but it's in the dictionary ti: seventh tone on a musical scale to: in the direction of uh: expression of hesitation um: expression of hesitation un: archaic form of "an" or "one" up: above/to raise us: we ut: also no idea why but this is valid too we: us wo: woe xi: a letter of the greek alphabet xu: a monetary unit in vietnam ya: short for yeah/an asian pear ye: archaic form of you yo: an exclamation to call attention to za: pizza

[@springinfialta106]

Yours is a truly ginormous idea!

[@meta04]

"te" and "ut" are more obscure ones in the do-re-mi set, "te" being the flat seventh and "ut" being another "do" (it was originally ut-re-mi-fa-sol-la but there were obvious problems with one of them having a consonant at the back) also you forgot "hm"

[@nate7251]

hey man, "or" isn't a word

[@mrsnufflegums]

Honestly the thing I'm most amazed about is that the Oxford English Dictionary isn't used in either scrabble dictionary

[@nagcopaleen9078]

The official scrabble dictionary: 100,000 words. North American tournament Word list: 190,000 words. Collins Scrabble words: 280,000 words. Oxford English Dictionary: 1,000,000 words, at least 600,000 of which would make it into scrabble without question. It would be a radically different game!

[@aspzx]

​@@nagcopaleen9078 How is it that the North American tournament word list has more words than the official Scrabble dictionary?

[@Jaxck77]

It’s because the Americans wouldn’t be able to misspell “colour” anymore.

[@JasonVaysberg]

@@aspzxthe official list only includes entries with base words up to 8 letters. Whereas, the tournament list includes words up to 15 letters. Also, a few trademarks in wide use (like jello) and curse words are added to the tournament dictionary.

[@nxtvim2521]

​@@Jaxck77the American spelling of Color exists in Oxford English, silly billy.

[@bungaIowbill]

Pah, modern scrabble is all about memorization!! The creativity of old-school scrabble is lost! I propose the variant Scrabble 96,000, alternatively called Richards Random. For each game, the dictionary is formed by generating random strings whose lengths and letter distributions match the original scrabble dictionary. Players get 30 minutes to study it before the game starts. Who's with me??

[@louisraphael1727]

Holy hell

[@redboot3911]

lol wtf

[@artsenor254]

You're a chess player, aren't you ? :P

[@Beesman88]

Fpar telpua seln, otnf hc ms. (That sounds good, count me up.) Made a generator for it, maybe I could try to get relations between letters in scrabble dictionary to make it sound more English while keeping it random, but as pure Fisher Scrabble this works. (Yitd o voiuiueae reg ew, tnnfi L enydt eia rs ade aeeieeige riuuawi ptmsair ew vnsgsism nmiecyadoe ko aiau ew eaaia csst Cwyasau accev daleici ew sfalcn, bri dr rkss Oceltu Oshasteo woun yesll.)

[@michaellee7313]

@@louisraphael1727 New comment just dropped

[@y124music]

As someone who has read thousands of chapters of english translated chinese books qi is 100% a word at very common in these books you can even see it in book titles and simular ie "3000 years of qi refinement" (which somehow has a netflix show apparently). I assume the other "fake" words in the dictionary are also commonly used by some people, or once were in relatively common use by some people - otherwise why would they be in the dictionary!

[@pjet8042]

Right, a word is a word because people needed a way to describe something. A word is only strange because a person doesn't know it yet.

[@IsomerMashups]

"Ch" has never even been _a_ word, let alone a _common_ word. It's a dead prefix.

[@y124music]

@@IsomerMashups Pronoun ch (obsolete, dialectal) Alternative form of I The word "I" is quite common. It was short for ich the form of I used in the West Country, West Midlands, and Kent in England some time ago. Hope this helps.

[@IsomerMashups]

@@y124music It is and has only ever been used _exclusively_ alongside other words. And, even were that _not_ the case, _it's still been out of use for centuries._ If you're willing to go back far enough and dissect prefixes enough, _every_ two-letter combination is a "word."

[@y124music]

@@IsomerMashups so "an" isn't a word because it only comes before vowels? Also the reason it can be counted but something like "éǵh₂" obviously can't is because it was used in english that is still understandable to most speakers (at least I think that's the reason I'm not Collins Dictionary).

[@Flush333]

I think many people grossly underestimate how many words they don't know. The two-letter ones just stand out because of their amazing utility in scrabble. There is a huge number of bizarre words but because there are so many more permutations of longer words you're way less likely to see any particular one, and again, the two-letter ones are unique in their versatility, causing them to pop up even more frequently. I imagine many people who value playing "beautiful", long words see the strange two-letter ones kind of like abusing a game mechanic. Unfortunately for them, pros play to win.

[@wanderer15]

Excellent points!

[@bultvidxxxix9973]

"za" seems to be more of a slang version of pizza. It really depends on what you call a word, but I would argue if "za" counts as word, so should for example "gud" (short for "good" as in "git gud"), "ez" ( short for "easy" as in "2ez" or "ez pz") or even just "lol".

[@taliesine.8343]

​@@bultvidxxxix9973 If your examples would show up in a dictionary, than they probably would be added to scrabble in the future and perfectly legal to play

[@reginaldforthright805]

Scrabble should make all words less than 8 letters illegal to play.

[@yclee-jy4xn]

​@@reginaldforthright805 ikr that would make the game so much better! Nobody would even be able to start a Scrabble game, which imo is better for the whole world

[@pturdjurhuus235]

Hi, i'm faroese and I think that I can explain that mystical word "oe". The etymology isn't exactly correct, the correct form would be "oethi" or "øði" in faroese. The word "øði" just means wrath. However we do have a faroese word for that phenomena called "niðanfok"(en. uppwards drift) or "fúka upp"(en. to drift up). I'm guessing that the word "oe" comes from the first faroese dictionary by Svabo in the early 1800's.

[@miaowmiaowchowface]

excellent thankyou!

[@wanderer15]

Amazing information, thank you

[@AlexDings]

Looks like the dictionary commitee fúka upp that one

[@eliasmochan]

It feels like "oe" should just be the English name for the letter ø (very uniformed opinion).

[@pturdjurhuus235]

@@eliasmochan correct, that is how the nordic languages typically "anglify" the letters ø and ö.

[@Dfcameron13]

What’s hard for me is stuff like at a local zoo there’s a tur and a degu. Both are live animals but not valid in NWL. OTOH, coins that haven’t existed for a thousand years are still valid. Weird.

[@pjet8042]

I was wearing a GI in karate class back in the 70's, but it was only recently added to the Official Word List. The Chinese musical instrument PIPA is in the OWL, but not other common Chinese instruments ERHU*, GUQIN* and GUZHENG*.

[@grzegorzbrzeczyszczykiewic563]

​​@@pjet8042 We do have to give dictionary makers a break, though. There are a lot of things out there in the world, and not enough time to give a short, easily digestible definition to all of them. Some things will be intentionally left out as if to say "look somewhere else, it'll be more enlightening than we could be", others will simply be omitted because time is finite and human knowledge is limited.

[@Octave03]

I love the Collins approach. I think it’s cool to see weird and archaic words and learning their meaning and history. And you can really put an opponent off with a wacky play too.

[@terracottapie]

I'm more of a TWL player and Collins observer. I don't have the time or the energy to memorize that much shit, but I find high-level Collins matches to be the most fun to watch as a spectator. The extra words add extra nuances and decisionmaking to the game (see the other video on this channel about Nigel deciding whether to challenge a play off the board because he knew which of the 9,751 different suffixed variations of SULFUR was bad in Collins).

[@williamhrivnak7345]

When I play with my friends, our agreement is that if you can define the word and use it in a sentence before looking it up, you get to keep it. It’s our happy middle ground because it allows people to play those weird 2 letter words have it feel like an actual word as opposed to “I just memorized it on the list” which I feel takes the spirit out of the game. TLDR: If you play “Za” and tell me that its another name for pizza, I’ll accept it better than if you say that its ok because its on a list

[@Planetyyyy]

I was playing with my friend and he made the word "cornflaked". Even though it caused him to win, I knew I could never challenge such a glorious word

[@aspzx]

I don't play Scrabble but these are the rules that my friends and I play Bananagrams with.

[@luigiusa7976]

I just don't like za as a word lol

[@moodlethenoodle]

I feel like slang shortenings that are this extreme shouldn’t be accepted

[@brightblackhole2442]

@@moodlethenoodle k

[@polopiipolo]

Credits to the ancient Chinese people who inadvertently coined QI for me to play the Q without U easily

[@pjet8042]

Give credit too to Arabians and Africans for QAT (also know as KAT and KHAT).

[@elemenopi9239]

middle easterners carrying most of the “Q without U” word category:

[@HazhMcMoor]

Nah blame the pinyin man who made ch written with q

[@headlessnotahorseman]

Great video, thanks! I think the issue is that so many of these words are so obscure that even a well-read person would never encounter them in the wild. A bit like all those ridiculous collective nouns that are never ever used in real life except to tell people that a group of rhinoceros is called a "crash". Some person just invented them for funsies a few hundred years ago and now the myth perpetuates that these are the collective nouns for things when there is no usage to back it up. It is the prescriptivism vs descriptivism debate. This turns Scrabble from a game of strategy building on knowledge you already have into rote memorisation of the equivalent of a foreign dictionary, like that guy who won the French Scrabble tournament without speaking French. Impressive stuff, but makes the game inaccessible to normal people.

[@wanderer15]

That’s true - well put. But there’s also a burden on the competitive world to show that not all levels of competition are like this (absurd dedication to memorization/min-maxing everything). Strong home players can walk into a tournament and find lots of people at their level to play. I admit I don’t do a great job of this myself, focusing as I do on the super-elite level of play.

[@carlorossi4928]

'That guy'

[@mirdordinii5783]

I will say, 'fraid' for a group of ghost is great.

[@uewbn7]

Your channel is way too good. Even with negative response you can still make a good and educational video out of it! Kudos to you. Scrabble is so much more complex than what I thought it was when I played it as a little kid. It's great to be able to learn more stuff from this channel. Keep up the great work!

[@thecubist3817]

love the comment that said "we" wasnt a word. Wonder how he thinks "we" all feel about that...

[@epicsamurai5]

I come back to this one every so often. As someone who often says "I'm jonesing for some za, I'm so glad it was added. On that note, I'm glad "jonesing" is also valid.

[@joebykaeby]

“Drop a comment below and I’ll add it to the pile” lmao most savage interaction reminder ever

[@jfb-]

Every scrabble checker I've used has given the definition of "ch" as an abbreviation for "church", which I always thought was strange as abbreviations aren't normally allowed. Interesting to learn it's original origin.

[@Dragonatrix]

It's original origin, per this video, is *still* an abbreviation though so it being allowed is still really weird

[@skippitysmithsonshorts]

It's real meaning *the pronounciation of the letter Ç*

[@kidada7714]

This little video just makes me smile. Love the history on OE. And the intro is hysterical. Thanks for all you do for Scrabble!

[@Ximolia]

Would love to see a similar explanatory style video about interesting banned/removed words from the game!

[@henrg]

that ruined a great bingo for me one time

[@Charles-yi3mx]

This is a great way to get your channel demonitized

[@wanderer15]

This would be a super interesting topic, but also has the potential to get pretty heated. I've been considering how to approach it!

[@frankyang3784]

I think 'Jew' was removed from Collins. Do you know why?@@wanderer15

[@Firefly256]

@@henrgI once had the n-word as the only valid bingo play, but thankfully that tournament was still using CSW19

[@_notch]

As usual, I have no idea why KZbin recommended this, and as usual, I learned a bunch of new things about a fascinating subject I've been sort of wondering about for a long time. Thanks for the video, that was a very satisfying watch!

[@ITR]

It would be interesting to see a dictionary with only commonly used words being used for scrabble. Like a special tourney or something.

[@sleepyzeph]

the weird 2 letter words having legitimate usage is great, but even if hypothetically they were all nonsense, i think they still contribute positively to the game. also, house rules exist for a reason. if people are against all the weird words, they can just... agree to play without them. i like the rule where a word has to be in the dictionary and ALSO you need to be able to define it from memory.

[@purpleness4422]

This is exactly where I disagree. Respectfully, of course. I think they make the game worse. In my opinion, they completely change the way you play the game. Thus, dividing the player base into players who have memorised these specific two-letter words, and those who have have not. I would consider that a massive negative. House rules are fine, I use them personally. But that should not stop me from arguing in favour of changing the official rules too. Why should people who think like me not have a chance to play in tournaments? Maybe my version of scrabble should be the official one, and your version can be relegated to house rules.

[@MrCactuar13]

​@@purpleness4422I think the two letter words just allows for more plays in general. At least personally I find that often I want to play a word that would otherwise get blocked by a 2 letter word I would otherwise think is invalid, but under Scrabble dictionary is probably perfectly fine. And the end game especially where you're scrambling to use up all your remaining letters is a perfect opportunity to squeeze in those last few points. More words=more fun imo. Besides, they're just 2 letter words they're not hard to memorize at all.

[@DanNguyen-oc3xr]

@@purpleness4422Is the game not divided into those categories as it stands now? I feel like the people who have memorized those 2 letter words have a distinct advantage in eitger scenario.

[@pjet8042]

There are no weird words. There are only words you don't know yet.

[@moocowpong1]

Whether the weird two letter words improve or detract from the game, I think it’s clear that removing them now would have a major impact on the character and strategy of the game.

[@Firefly256]

Lmao 0:59 did Daniel just ask what “or” mean?

[@benztheprotogen3502]

I love that the explanation for ch is that it's part of a word, coming from a german word

[@senecavermeulen8110]

it’s not from a german word, it’s just that english used to have nearly the same word for ‘I’ as german, ‘ich.’ this is from proto-west germanic *ik, which fricated in german to ‘ich’ (fricative at the end) and affricated in english to ‘ich,’ pronounced historically as ‘each.’ the words were pronounced differently in english and german, it’s just that ‘ch’ represents a fricative in german and mostly an affricate in english

[@benztheprotogen3502]

ah i was confused as he said the first person pronoun@@senecavermeulen8110

[@ethanbrenna9798]

I do think that, just as a sound will become a word if enough people recognize it as having a common meaning, a sound should stop being a word if that recognition falls below a certain threshold. I understand that the scrabble dictionary is only borrowing from other lexicographical works, but I still think a middle ground should be taken where if a word is clearly no longer in use in a given language, it shouldn't be allowed for use in a game centered around spelling words of that language. Still, this is no gripe at all about your channel - I love your videos!

[@wanderer15]

The idea of cleaning up the dictionary of obsolete words absolutely seems like a good one on its face. The problem is that as competitive players, we're all very fond of our obscure, barely-acceptable words which we often can't even define (lol), and would hate to see them go!

[@Pablo360able]

@@wanderer15From a practical perspective, I can't imagine it would go smoothly. Adding new words is one thing - if players fail to memorize them, then they won't know all their options, and *might* issue a spurious challenge or two. If words are removed, but a player doesn't remember that it was? Dear lord the *salt* that would ensue.

[@itskmillz]

Love the stuff, as a guy who only played the game a handful of times as a kid I never thought I would enjoy scrabble content so much but the algorithms brought me here and I really love the complexity of the top level strategies! I found a similar interest about chess 6 years ago and I see some similarities in the way players compete in both (clock, 1v1, ELO, etc..)

[@Alphoric]

I like how people have a problem with slang terms like Za but are perfectly happy to use ‘sus’ and ‘rofl’

[@excelmuyiwa2407]

I remember early on in my Scrabble career when I'd get so mad while studying words in CSW and discovering a ton of words that just didn't make any sense to me. But after a few years now, they are barely words to me anymore, i store them like code and don't bother making too much sense of it. Great video by the way Will! Love how you're making lemonades off your experiences and criticism. Much love from Nigeria 💚

[@NoNameAtAll2]

"they are barely words, I store them as code" that's exactly why people are complaining - scrabble became "use random sequences of letters soneone wrote down" instead of "show off how diverse your vocabulary is"

[@IsomerMashups]

That's _exactly_ why people complain about it. It's not even a word game at that point.

[@cringeginge7663]

But whats even the point of scrabble at that point

[@finnpeterson4335]

​@@IsomerMashups Who cares? Let people play scrabble however they want. It's a game made to entertain people. If tournament scrabble players enjoy it, then they are meeting the intended purpose of scrabble.

[@IsomerMashups]

@@finnpeterson4335 I care. And evidently you do.

[@XANDOAndy]

Coming from the world of speedrunning, all of these complaints remind me *so* much of complaints about "glitches" in speedruns. Anyone who has ever actually been active in a speedrunning community knows that it is impossible to come up with a consistent definition for what does and does not count as a "glitch". The only reasonable compromise is to say, "If it can be done by anybody with a copy of the game, it is fair game." As a result, speedrunners don't really see glitches as a form of cheating, or even as anything unusual; we just see them as additional tools to move around the game we're playing. Unrelated, one of the versions of Scrabble I play the most is on the PlayStation. I've always really liked the cover art for the PAL PS1 version of Scrabble, but I only just learned from this video that it was just using the cover of the Collins dictionary at the time! I love that image! (the one of the tiles fighting over the triple word score)

[@wanderer15]

Amazing comparison that I had not considered before!

[@IsomerMashups]

The distinction is this: Speedrunners don't pull out absurd glitches when they play a casual multiplayer game with their friends. They generally have the social awareness to understand that there's a distinction between the spirit and the law of the game. _Scrabblers don't._ _That's_ where the terrible reputation originates. I go to a weekly board game night. Every time I've seen someone passionately interested in Scrabble, they rules lawyer to hell and back and drop words like "oe" and "ch." _Nobody_ enjoys it. Fortunately, they _do_ seem to have the social awareness to realize they're unwelcome and never come back. I suppose the glares, eyerolls, and whispering makes it slightly clearer.

[@XANDOAndy]

@@IsomerMashups What are you talking about?

[@IsomerMashups]

@@XANDOAndy I'm sorry for your lack of reading comprehension.

[@derektroutman4793]

​@@IsomerMashupsI mean, speedrunners absolutely will pull out glitches and similar in play against similarly skilled players. If you want someone to go easy on you, you can always ask them. Or make a rule that means the person playing the word also needs to roughly know the definition of it really is getting out of hand.

[@drewsterbrewster]

Will's videos always give me so much happiness, love scrabble lore videos like this

[@hridaysamtani5797]

Highly informative and entertaining. Great stuff, as usual, Will. Although there are plenty of words which aren't featured in CSW yet, lexicographers don't get enough credit.

[@TedRandomGamingChannel]

Another wonderful video. Personally, I think the "weird" words can be very helpful, and one of the reasons I like seeing your videos covering professional games is all the weird words I see in them! Keep up the great work :)

[@Nexit1337]

the secret of scrabble is that you are not forced to make a real word, in fact you are allowed to make up any word you want, you just have to convince the opponent that the word you want to use is a real word used in the world, and the moment he approves and your word is placed, it's there for the game yes, doing it is impolite 🗿

[@Charles-yi3mx]

It's not really "impolite", challenging is part of the box rules of Scrabble and you can easily prevent your opponent by doing it by improving your word knowledge so you can spot fake words (which are called phonies in competitive scrabble) and challenge them off more easily This is a legitimate strategy used by tournament players, some of the (fake) words I recall having been played successfully by top tournament players in a desperate attempt to get back into the game are TETIART, REDISCERN, and OVERTALL. Of course, you could call this "cheating", but it's part of the box rules, and like I said you can easily prevent this from happening to you if you get better at recognizing phonies, and each of these cases the opponent made a mistake by not recognizing that those words aren't real and not challenging them. Also in my opinion, phonying being a valid strategy adds another dimension of bluffing to the game and makes for some of the most hilarious stories. Top Scrabble player Josh Sokol got away with BOBETAH in a game and defined it as a cross between a bobcat and cheetah.

[@Dashie04]

This is how the band Foghat was formed

[@HazhMcMoor]

I find it hilarious that they made phoney and challenge a legit tactic of the game. Makes seeing the weird words bearable

[@repacharge431]

Hahahaha that beginning was hilarious. Keep up the incredible high-quality content!

[@koipen]

My only gripe with 2-letters words is the very fact that there are so many different lists of them - I play Words With Friends which has a totally non-standard dictionary from either SOWPODS or TWL, so the occasion I play OTB scrabble with friends my 2-letter intuition goes out the window.

[@WipZedKay]

Know what? Screw using a combined word library from different English dictionaries, just add EVERY dictionary into play and watch the chaos unfold!

[@pikchassis]

urban dictionary

[@timonix2]

Some "weird" words like qi is probably pretty common now due to fiction and games.

[@alanhe4476]

some of the complaints are understandable (za seems like a weird include, especially since its a localized shortening of pizza - since grats, crip, guac, preg aren't legal despite being pretty common modern shortenings of words), but complaining about qi just sounds ignorant, though i guess the comment about shortening is moreso a question of the dictionaries catching up with modern language

[@wanderer15]

GUAC at least is coming in the 7th edition update!

[@korohacker]

I used to play this version of Scrabble (maybe early 2000s), where in it contains the official rule book, that ALSO contains the whole entire list of 2-letter words valid at that time. Me and my friends always refer to this list to check whether our two-letter word plays are valid, and with its help, managed to net some crazy combo plays

[@cmyk8964]

Just looked it up on Wiktionary; “ch” is a dialectal weak form of “ich”, which is an archaic form of “I”. Dutch has a similar weak form in colloquial use: ik → ’k.

[@misekai6396]

I think scrabble is more fun when the words are well known by everyone playing. In tournaments that means all the words and Will telling us the definitions when the rarer words are played is a great way to increase vocabulary even if the chance to use the words is unlikely to come.

[@RagingAcid]

Many people think scrabble is a word game when actually it is a game that uses words

[@meinhardhansen3050]

Wow, what are the chances. I recently got interested in scrabble and this channel. I did not expect to hear about the Faroe Islands, my home country, in a video about scrabble. I have personaly never heard about the word "oe" but now i will remember it forever.

[@jaolaugh]

I've heard a couple stories of Scrabble experts traveling to the Faroes, asking about oes, and the locals having zero idea what they're talking about

[@warrendsmith6832]

HA! Proof that scrabble nerds just made this shit up! "ZA", yeah right.

[@jaolaugh]

@@warrendsmith6832 kzbin.info/www/bejne/p5yzY3ltoLyhbaMsi=IG_L4j4dkpool_SD

[@cukka99]

You mean dictionary makers, not Scrabble nerds. Blame the people who put together the source dictionaries, which had nothing to do with Scrabble. The one and only one example I know of a set of words being added to the Scrabble dictionary without coming from the source (general purpose, not Scrabble) dictionary was the time the Scrabble owners had a little publicity stunt and had people vote on a word to add. GEOCACHE was the word voted in, and was added, along with its related forms like GEOCACHED etc. Other than that, it has always been the case that dictionary makers decide to add a word to their dictionary for dictionary making reasons that have nothing to do with Scrabble. So yeah, Scrabble players did not make up ZA or CH or anything else. They got included because they were in an actual English dictionary. @@warrendsmith6832

[@wanderer15]

How cool! Thank you for stopping by my channel and watch out for those "oes" ;)

[@turevedin9968]

Scrabble alternative: only allow words that are found in all included dictionaries

[@russellmoore8187]

Playing Scrabble growing up, our parents always allowed the kids to consult the dictionary while playing (not just challenging), and yes this made games take forever. But as a result I've known since age 6 that an Oe is a wind off the Faroe Islands

[@joshuaolmsted2865]

I think a lot of casuals to the world of scrabble bristle at the idea of scrabble being a *strategy* game. Or even of the game being played competitively at all. I think a lot of those people have a memory of a time they busted out their parents dusty scrabble box, and found out that either (a) one of their friends knew some basic defensive scrabble strategy that led to a clustered board and a less fun game for,l them, or (b) they just realized that other people just have a much better command of vocabulary, making them feel dumb.

[@qqw743]

I don't bristle. I understand strategy is involved. I like competition. I still think that the list of words in the competitive game should match general knowledge or risk becoming an elitist gated experience -- which is what we observe. So be it.

[@shonuff5297]

@@qqw743 It doesnt take much to memorize all the 2 letter words.

[@Celia_Dawn]

@@qqw743 There's 107 two-letter words in scrabble. I don't even play the game competitively but that's hardly anything to memorize.

[@wanderer15]

@@qqw743 I really don't disagree with this point of view. It's a shame that so much of the good stuff in Scrabble is in fact gated behind the oddness of the words.

[@terracottapie]

​@@qqw743 Yeah but the problem is, how do you define "general knowledge" in an objective way, that still allows millions of people to play by one standard set of words? No matter how you do it, some of the words are going to be "weird" to somebody. Setting the standard at "this word appears in reputable dictionaries" seems fine. Much better that way, vs. "internet rando thinks this word is dumb, take it out"

[@HeavyMetalGamingHD]

I don't care at all for scrabble, but I watch all of your videos, because they are simply very entertaining. The stories are great and you are a good storyteller, a very good storyteller.

[@wanderer15]

Thank you for giving my videos a chance!

[@xakuray5522]

I don't know if it was already the case back in the 70th, but a lot of recent dictionaries would include made-up words so as to use it as evidence in case their work was simply copied/stolen. Thus, by including all words from multiple dictionary sources, it is very possible that actual made-up words became part of the scrabble dictionary.

[@BKNeifert]

I actually used "Oe" in a poem. It's a zephyr in the South Pacific.

[@negativeseven]

It does not particularly help the case that ch is defined to be "always fused with the verb".

[@tommyallen5761]

I mean that's gotta be only the fifth best complaint about ch. A shortened, fused version of a German pronoun that fell out of use over 500 years ago? Come on now.

[@robinier]

Thanks for making this. As someone who has studied linguistics this is a pretty interesting and informative overview of why the Scrabble dictionaries are as they are. The Chambers dictionary makes a lot of sense. Sometimes when I play with family we pick a single dictionary like Merriam Collegiate and sometimes even rule out certain classes of words (like foreign currencies, letter names, or slang) to accommodate everyone. Keeps it more accessible for everyone, because honestly it's not as fun when one person knows all these obscure Scrabble words that no one has heard of.

[@wanderer15]

Scrabble is great at all levels as long as there isn't a huge knowledge or skill gap between players - agree that one person going crazy with those weird "Scrabbly" words against others who don't know them isn't conducive to a fun game.

[@256laika]

I find it so interesting how detached from language as we usually see it scrabble words get it and how they’re really nothing more than tools for the players. Imagine if the community took a similar approach to say some grassroots esports (super smash bros melee is the main one im thinking of because its the one im most familiar with) and changed the rules (word list) for some kind of betterment of the game cause I feel like there definitely could exist some arbitrary set of letters that would make a more engaging game if they were accepted as valid

[@wanderer15]

I compare Scrabble to Magic a lot - a game with a very very large “move set” (words in Scrabble, cards in Magic) but Magic cards are obviously very purposefully created to perform a certain role, whereas in Scrabble, the development of language is completely random (detached, to use your word).

[@code_report]

I can't definitively say this is your best video ever, but it is definitely the best video I have watched! I know the editing of the comments and all the graphics probably took a great deal of time (as well as the audio/music) but it paid off in spades! Keep up the fantastic work. You are doing more for scrabble than you probably know!

[@wanderer15]

Thank you so much! It was a little different than the game analysis videos for sure, which revolve a lot around the game board. I'll definitely be experimenting with this format more.

[@qqw743]

Two thoughts: 1. I've mentioned before that it would be interesting to have tournaments based on a sort of People's Dictionary of words in common parlance. This would eliminate the problem that success in competitive Scrabble is based on list memorization (and strategy of course) rather than on playing a game based on something we all know -- English. The People's Dictionary could be crowdsourced by sifting through the existing word lists, casting aside nonsense like oe that no one uses. The standard would be "Have you said it in the last year?" 2. Would love to see you interview Fatsis, or discuss and update Word Freak. I read it when it came out and am curious what has changed and what has not. Thanks.

[@denisl2760]

What if someone is well educated in a certain topic and regularly uses obscure chemical names for example? They're clearly real words, but would that make it into your "people's dictionary"?

[@brainface2970]

But this does not eliminate memorization at all. You would have to memorize what is on the "normal word" list and what is not. Also this would feel awful to play casually because a word you use in your day-to-day life might not be in the basic dictionary and you can't really guess.

[@eric-smith-egg]

just find some crazy person to spend 3 years and do it themselves

[@qqw743]

@@denisl2760 In order to make it into the people's dictionary, it would have to be upvoted by a certain percentage of voters, eliminating obscure expertise problems.

[@qqw743]

@@brainface2970 It might not eliminate memorization but it would greatly reduce it. If you have "DABINGL" on your rack, you'll find a bingo or not, depending on your strengths as a player of ordinary words. But if I play it, you won't challenge it because you'll go "Oh, yeah, fair, that's a word." But if I ask someone who is not memorizing the Collins to find a word using "OORIE," they might not find "oorie" unless they're Scottish.

[@Zebra_M]

Removing words whose dictionary definitions start with "old english, archaic, dialect, abbreviation" and so on would already start to clean the list up nicely to make it more 'reasonable', but in the end just seeing it as a list of allowed tools makes more sense than tackling an eternal debate over which words count.

[@n018b5]

My favourite part is that at 0:55 they act as if emeus is a ridiculous word, its the plural of emu, that's like saying ducks isn't a word.

[@derpinator4912]

"Emeus" has an extra e

[@gridstop-or6cb]

Why do these people think "ab" and "aw" aren't words?

[@Muskoxing]

And "Eh" as well! I use that word every day! Unrelated question, guess which country I'm from!

[@Charles-yi3mx]

I've seen many people say that onomatopoeia shouldn't really be words

[@CarMedicine]

and "we" and "or"!! (1:00)

[@Muskoxing]

@@Charles-yi3mx That seems silly to me. Where do you draw the line? Should words like honk or bang be invalid?

[@arthurcaron9453]

@@Muskoxing why should'nt they ? both are frequently used verbs...

[@sjoerdglaser2794]

Fun fact, oe is the English writing of the Scandinavian (letter) ø.

[@Ascension721]

I love some of the wacky words in there. Makes it harder to learn, but you learn a lot of stuff.

[@ciscoortega9789]

The obscure two-letter words are weird, but (as a novice) I've come to accept them as a net good for the game because it makes the gameplay more exciting! Playing parallels is one of my favorite things to do when playing with my brother, as well as dropping the QI/ZA bombs Qi is tooootally a valid word too, like I don't think it should be a contentious question. It's just ki/chi but romanized different (yall heard of the Qing Dynasty?) ...most of the complaints in the intro are valid gripes except for the people complaining about nu, like lmao broskis have yall ever heard of the Greek alphabet. Of all the 2-letter words in the list, nu has got to be one of the least challenge-able

[@denisl2760]

Qi is clearly a word. Za is slang that should not be a word.

[@Charles-yi3mx]

The words BINGOING and BINGOED are actually only in the Scrabble dictionary because of Scrabble. The definition of BINGOED in the Collins dictionary is "BINGO, to play all seven of one's tiles at Scrabble [v]".

[@wanderer15]

NU complaints surprise me too!

[@pjet8042]

@@denisl2760 - ZA bothered me too when it was added to the official dictionary. I wondered if it was a regional thing (like the way a sandwich is either a sub, a hero or a hoagie depending on where you are in the U.S.) but I've yet to hear pizza referred to as za anywhere.

[@ahoy1014]

How on earth did so many people complain about 'ab'? Onomatopoeia I can see why you'd get confused over, but 'ab' is literally one of the most well-known colloquial muscle names.

[@Charles-yi3mx]

There's a comment in the mix complaining about "or" as well. Some people don't think before they speak.

[@wanderer15]

@@Charles-yi3mx I even once had a comment of someone listing "BE" as a word they disliked, but couldn't dig it up when I searched for it (maybe deleted in shame?)

[@tsukiiiiiii]

This is literally my reaction when seeing people complaining about QI. Bro QI is more well known than like 80% of all the 2-letter words in Scrabble from both dictionary

[@RealGrouchy]

They probably think of it, rightly or wrongly, as an abbreviation of "abdominal muscle"

[@evanbelcher]

Question: If a new rule to competitive Scrabble was announced that forced players to define any word they played (not necessarily recite the official definition, just make it clear that they know what the word means) do you think that would actually limit the words that get played, or would that be just as easy for pros to memorize as the words themselves?

[@wanderer15]

Interesting suggestion! I do think the top players would make that extra effort. It surely would not be as easy to memorize - it would introduce another barrier to full in-game mastery of the dictionary, but I don't think it would be an unreachable level of memorization.

[@RealGrouchy]

This is more or less the house rule I play with (in noncompetitive, i.e. fun, Scrabble)

[@pjet8042]

@@RealGrouchy -yes, when I play against non-tournament players (i.e. living room Scrabble), I only play a word if I can define it.

[@jfb-]

That's the house rule I use against less experienced players. They can look up words freely, but I'll only play a word if I can give a definition.

[@peterfranklinrouth895]

The opposite of Nigel Richards and French

[@StellarNova45]

I made a computer science project that needed a dictionary of words, and I had pulled my dictionary from the official scrabble website. I was wondering why the small words were so weird

[@Para20Site]

I started playing word games on the internet in English ever since I had internet when I was in my teens. English is not my native language, but most people learn English here. The first game I played was just a basic 16 letter anagram game and you would get the full word list at the end. I'd always read the list after each game and thus expand my vocabulary for the game and get better at the game. I'd never bothered looking up the meaning of those words as I figured I didn't need to know that and I would learn the meaning when that became relevant to speaking English. This wasn't to expand my English vocabulary, it was just to get better at playing this one game. When I started playing Scrabble in English online later on I used this knowledge to play obscure words I'd learned from that game and people would ask me what they meant. I regularly had to say "I don't know. I just know it's a valid word." And it would often piss people off that a non-native English speaker was beating them using words they didn't know the meaning of but were valid words.

[@Sam-oz8pn]

I do think there should be a “colloquial words” dictionary where only the top 100k or so words *currently* used (like, either you know them or you could reasonably find them in a book or on the news) are valid. It just makes more sense for most people who think of Scrabble as a language game and not a technical game

[@memyselfishness]

It would also create an interesting experience for tournament play. They would have to use a highly decreased dictionary, limiting their options.

[@tjenadonn6158]

​​@@memyselfishnessMaybe it could be a separately sanctioned Scrabble variant, akin to how FIDE has started sanctioning tournaments for Chess 960/Fischer Random Chess in addition to standard chess. Maybe it could be Scrabble's answer to bullet chess.

[@procsorted]

A dictionary designed for school kids would probably do the trick here. You could use one in your games at home. I'm sure lots of families already do something similar.

[@denisl2760]

@@procsorted I don't think that's a good approach. Highly technical obscure words that are still used should be allowed, such as chemical names. Archaic foreign versions of spellings of words that aren't used anywhere and slang that is only used when texting friends should not be allowed.

[@procsorted]

@@denisl2760 Ah so you want the Denis dictionary. Fair enough. Just let the publishers know which words you like 😋

[@77elite9]

If I didn’t get in to scrabble I would probably be like the many people asking what the heck these weird words are. But due to me getting into the game I actually now get it. And as of now I’m getting scolded at school and home when I play scrabble because of these weird words.

[@wanderer15]

You'll have to show them this video ;)

[@IsomerMashups]

The fact that you don't understand _why_ people are upset with you demonstrates precisely the lack of social awareness which is causing them to get upset with you in the first place.

[@77elite9]

@@IsomerMashups I’m cool with the people who scolded me after I showed them this video. I’m fine now.

[@jakeholmes9296]

I love all the unusual words in scrabble they’re awesome. Learning is fun, it turns out!

[@epicsamurai5]

People getting mad at “Qi” clearly don’t watch Avatar.

[@xl000]

Avatar ?

[@santaisreal]

@@xl000 Avatar: The Last Airbender. It's a pretty popular show and there's a part in it where the main character has to "channel their qi" or something.

[@xl000]

@@santaisreal are you talking about the 2005 Nickelodeon anime ?

[@santaisreal]

@@xl000 idk what year it was or if it was on nickelodeon lol i watched it on like netflix or something

[@kend0638]

The "challenge" of a word should force the opponent to come up with a sentence using that word, or explaining it

[@AlexDings]

I get the logic in allowing any word that is in even one of the source dictionaries, but we probably could have avoided alienating a lot of people if the word list included only the words found in *a majority* of sources, like at least three of the five lexica. That seems like a much more solid basis for a word list that people can get on board with.

[@wanderer15]

I have thought this too. I didn't get into this in the video, but one (and only one) of the OSPD updates did conform to a multi-source standard, whereas the rest became single-source (as I mentioned, the reason is increasingly that there aren't enough places updating regularly for there to even be a multi-source requirement anymore)

[@petrie911]

I've learned to stop worrying and love the two letter words. Now I'm more annoyed by the decision to remove the swear words. Who doesn't have fond memories of giggling over playing naughty words in Scrabble?

[@IsomerMashups]

I've learned to stop playing Scrabble.

[@kidada7714]

Hi Will. Question about foreign words… The original box rules state that foreign words included in a standard dictionary are not permitted in play. That being the case, why are “adios” and “ciao” etc… included in the scrabble dictionary?

[@wanderer15]

Good question! It's a fine line. Take the word "ballet," for example. We use this word all the time to refer to the style of dance, but it's a French word by origin. Your examples of "adios" and "ciao" are likely included because they are used to say goodbye by English speakers (I've heard them and probably used them many times), so despite the fact that they are of foreign origin, they're still understandable and used by a wide majority of English speakers.

[@tissuepaper9962]

Significantly more than half of modern English vocabulary is actually Spanish, French, and Latin vocabulary. No matter where you choose to draw the line between "foreign" words and "native" words, people will disagree. Is "tortilla" an English word? "Taco"? What about "beignet"? "Sopapilla"? Thus far all my examples have been food words but there are plenty of others that we could argue are actually foreign words. Ibidem, homicide, llama, camel, pastiche, patrician, bourgeoisie, raconteur, comptroller, hijab, qawwali, camera, etc. are all directly calqued from Latin, Arabic, Spanish, and French and, despite that, they're all officially-recognized Scrabble words.

[@CyberchaoX]

Like half of those words are obvious though. Can't believe "em" was one of the ones that kept recurring; I actually knew the meaning of that one before this video.

[@tissuepaper9962]

and even if EM and EN weren't typesetting terms, they would still be the names of the letters "M" and "N". Even funnier than people challenging EM and EN is people challenging AB, ET, and QI. Some of the comments shown at the beginning of the video even challenge the validity of OR and WE. I can understand not knowing that FE is the 17th letter of the Hebrew abjad or that DE is the fifth letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, but not knowing AB or QI?

[@crosswordboss]

Why the Official Scrabble Dictionary would exclude the OED to their list of go-to dictionaries was not a wise choice. Actually, the Shorter OED would have been the only dictionary they would have needed!

[@tinymicrowave6821]

I’ve always wondered that, it’s hilarious how many words are legal.

[@sophiegrey9576]

"But they play stuff like ... (AW)" aw man, it sure sucks that aw isn't a word. hm, maybe i can write down all these weird words on one ab, then get some za while i study

[@sophiegrey9576]

also people questioning 'za' as a word is vindicating for me hating when people refer to pizza as 'za'

[@sophiegrey9576]

OH MY GOD SOMEONE QUESTIONING "WE" AS A WORD LMFAO -we- need to ban that person from everything /j

[@nomophobe]

Given that no-one is forced to play Scrabble, go to Scrabble tournaments, or watch Scrabble-related videos, it really is strange how many people are busy getting mad over not recognising every Scrabble word. If learning new words to play a game doesn't sound like fun to you, have you ever considered just not playing the game? 😂😂😂

[@DadgeCity]

Word.

[@wanderer15]

True! But I really do understand why the dictionary frustrates a lot of people. I don't expect this video to change too many minds, but at least it'll explain how things came to be the way they are.

[@pjet8042]

In over 20 years of playing in our local club, there were 2 incidents where someone came up to us in a coffee shop, observed the "weird" words on the board, and became angry and argumentative.

[@HazhMcMoor]

I give up and only being interested recently because of this channel. Then again the mind games to manipulate board state is what makes it interesting, not the obscure words used. If only common words are used, it'd be better.

[@ieatatsonic]

Here I was thinking Za was like some old word that became defunct. No, it's actually just about Hot Za

[@Cyfrik]

Which is a bit weird. Isn't 'za typically spelled with an apostrophe, which the rules say excludes it?

[@actionic135]

Is it easier to memorize all the 2-letter words or the 2-letter nonwords?

[@aronquemarr7434]

The 2 letter words. There's not that many.

[@algecuscalbra5323]

It's just funny that people don't make a fuss about long words they have never seen in their life but when they see a shorter one they don't know the meaning of, somehow that is preposterous. It's all just words.

[@rickpgriffin]

Reading the entry on 'ch' is still odd because it's not a word so much as a clitic--it never appears on its own. So it really seems like it was only included because it's in a full entry despite that and the original rules didn't make a distinction any further than 'doesn't contain apostrophes or hyphens'--otherwise there's a series of prefixes that would have been included that aren't because their entries end in a hyphen. (unless they are? Do all prefixes appear in the scrabble dictionary?)

[@wanderer15]

Yeah, hard to argue with this logic regarding CH. In general, prefixes do not appear on their on, but a bunch of them are in there because of other definitions (example: RE is a note of the DO RE MI scale, not re- as in "again")

[@leafgreensniper13]

Thanks for not censoring the comments

[@mpeterll]

I learned what an oe is today (although it's not in you-tube's spellcheck list). I always thought slang words and abbreviations were not allowed (which would eliminate za on two counts).

[@ctrlaltdan5619]

Okay so after the 40th time of KZbin recommending me your videos and me watching the whole thing AGAIN I figured I should subscribe. Great stuff!

[@wanderer15]

Thank you very much!

[@samuelharnden9641]

Is there a method to remove words if it is found that the word did not really exist?

[@undeniablySomeGuy]

It’s weird that people would be so against obscure short words. Almost never have I seen people upset by obscure long words

[@IsomerMashups]

"Ch" contains no vowels. It is literally unpronounceable.

[@jordylont1879]

All of that "weird word criticism" wouldn't need to exist if people just Google random words they don't know

[@IsomerMashups]

Ah yes, let me arbitrarily look up "ch" on my off-time just to check whether or not an unpronounceable combination of two consonants is technically a word in Scrabble! Except, oh... wait! When I do so, I find that _it's not recognized by modern dictionaries as anything other than an abbreviation._

[@iGleeson]

"I've never heard of the word so it's not a word!!!"

[@freebeerishere]

Fascinating, both the video and the fact that so many can’t stand these words?! When I would play Scrabble with my family I would always be the one trying to put down two letter words and hear “that’s not a word”. So when I discovered that all these funky words are played COMPETITIVELY I felt very vindicated. I think all these short strange words are what makes competitive Scrabble so much more interesting. We get those “overlaying plays” dumping for “fishing” and just gives the game that high skill ceiling. Oh no… I’m Scrabblepilled……

[@IsomerMashups]

Newsflash: the reason you don't understand it is because you're the one causing the bad reputation Scrabble fans have.

[@DeafeningZap]

I knew a couple of the two letter words, like za and qi. My mother would flip her shit every time we play, saying they aren't real words. She would concede that I won, but it wasn't with real words. Very annoying and that is just me knowing a couple two letter words

[@DadgeCity]

Playing in family situations, you can (and probably should) agree to play with a smaller wordlist, eg. whatever dictionary you have on the shelf.

[@ohtani2024]

When I was very small, PH was once a valid word I swear I played this word before. Also EMF was valid too!!!! Now both of these words no longer exist

[@IsomerMashups]

My dude, you have gotten to the level of Scrabble brain-rot that you are _knowingly antagonizing your own mother._ I've got four letters for you: S-T-O-P.

[@BramCohen]

I'm working on a word game for... reasons. I've put together a dictionary which likely most controversially includes lots of common names, mostly because it seems likely that people will enjoy playing the names of people they know which helps with engagement.

[@wanderer15]

Let me know if you need a play-tester! (A bit star-struck to have you here, by the way.)

[@BramCohen]

@@wanderer15 It's bit off from working and is a fast-paced money game so a bit afield from scrabble but I'll let you know. My dictionary so far is here: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lFXETWmN5ZBKZ2adK0nOwF-RzLYsxkVoEZFw98v-IDw/edit?usp=sharing It seems like for scrabble players there should be a north american bullshit scrabble dictionary containing non-dictionary words you're likely to get away with and which your opponents are likely to try

[@evandonovan9239]

Great explanation! I stopped playing Scrabble long ago because I love the written word, not memorizing words that are good for use in Scrabble play. That being said, I am surprised people thought qi was an invalid word. Not only is that one incredibly useful in Scrabble, it's also a fairly common word these days. Za is not as common, but I can see why they would've added it.

[@stylishlyheartless979]

The perfect video, I’ve been arguing in favour of the scrabble dictionary when playing with my family and now I can explain why some words are in the dictionary

[@the1barbarian781]

I’m curious in how well scrabble players know definitions of words or if they just remember them as a combination of letters in order

[@wanderer15]

For obscure words, I’m afraid that many players (myself included) have only spotty command of definitions. There’s only so much memory available in my brain and I need it for as many words as I can cram in! I know that sounds really strange to say about a word game.

[@purpleness4422]

The problem is specifically about the two-letter words, not obscure words in general. Inclusion of these words completely changes how you can play the game. This is not about increasing your vocabulary, its like rules you have to memorise to be any good at the game. That too would be fine if these words were undeniably legitimate words of english, but they are not! "za"? really? who even uses that? If za is allowed why isn't "brah" (as another version of "bro")? There needs to a more robust criteria (for me highly localised words should not be allowed, for instance). If you use a seven letter word which was used once, in a text written in the 1800s, most people would be impressed by your knowledge. But these two letter words are completely game changing and, in my opinion, often do not feel legitimate words of english.

[@elephantyarn7378]

Sounds like a question meant more for the dictionaries determining what should count as a word than for Scrabble itself which accepts the dictionary's judgements without judgement.

[@IsomerMashups]

@@elephantyarn7378 The dictionaries have no obligation to make Scrabble enjoyable. The makers of Scrabble do.

[@vitex198]

Thanks for explaining how the Scrabble dictionary came about!

[@bungaIowbill]

Unrelated, but hear me out: what about a full-information version of Scrabble? The initial racks are randomized, as is the order of the letters in the bag, but the order at which you get new letters is revealed at the beginning of the game. Still way too complex to do exact calculation until close to the end, but maybe interesting?

[@wanderer15]

These are the turns in competitive games that drain the most time - the endgame (perfect information) and when your opponent plays a phony bingo which you challenge off. Some of those decisions are brutally complicated (and very interesting, as you suggest)

[@mariamachida7571]

If I may ask Will, do you know why they don't use Oxford for either american or world scrabble dictionaries? Like I personally love the weird archaic words that Collins allows but I feel like that could have been better achieved using Oxford instead. Would you happen to know any historical reason as to the non inclusion? Thank you for responding!

[@wanderer15]

Good question! As I understand it, the reason that "collegiate" dictionaries were chosen as sources is that there are actually "full-size" dictionaries like the OED which are significantly larger. The collegiate level was seen as an intermediate step/compromise between shorter dictionaries and much more massive dictionaries that would exacerbate the issue of obscure words appearing frequently in competitive play.

[@petertaylor4980]

OED, at least online, lists word frequency so that could be used to filter it down to a manageable size while favouring modern words over obsolete ones.