NASPA Word List (NWL, formerly Official Tournament and Club Word List, referred to as OTCWL, OWL, TWL) is the official word authority for tournament Scrabble in the USA and Canada under the aegis of

NASPA Games NASPA Games, formerly known as North American Scrabble Players Association (NASPA), is a nonprofit organization founded in 2009 to administer competitive Scrabble tournaments and clubs in North America. It officially took over these activities f ...

.NASPA Dictionary Committee & Its Word Sources
/ref> It is based on the ''

Official Scrabble Players Dictionary The ''Official Scrabble Players Dictionary'' or OSPD is a dictionary developed for use in the game Scrabble, by speakers of American and Canadian English. History Background and creation The ''Official Scrabble Players Dictionary'' was first ...

'' (OSPD) with modifications to make it more suitable for tournament play. Its British and international-English counterpart is ''

Collins Scrabble Words Collins Scrabble Words (CSW, formerly SOWPODS) is the word list used in English-language tournament Scrabble in most countries except the US, Thailand and Canada. The term SOWPODS is an anagram of the two abbreviations '' OSPD'' (Official Scrabble ...

''.

Current edition

North American tournament Scrabble currently uses the fifth edition of NWL (officially NWL2020, but variously called OWL5, OTCWL2020, TWL5, and TWL2020). The

Dictionary Committee created this version in mid-2020 and it took effect on January 6, 2021; it is the second version published autonomously by NASPA rather than by

Merriam-Webster Merriam-Webster, Inc. is an American company that publishes reference books and is especially known for its dictionaries. It is the oldest dictionary publisher in the United States. In 1831, George and Charles Merriam founded the company as ...

under its copyright. NWL2020 contains every word in the sixth edition of the ''

'' as well as words considered unsuitable for that book (offensive words and trademarks). It also contains words of nine or more letters, unlike the OSPD. It differs from its predecessor, NWL2018, only in the removal of 259 words deemed to be personally applicable offensive slurs, precipitated by rule changes proposed by the North American holder of SCRABBLE trademarks,

Hasbro, Inc. Hasbro, Inc. (; a syllabic abbreviation of its original name, Hassenfeld Brothers) is an American multinational conglomerate holding company incorporated and headquartered in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Hasbro owns the trademarks and products of ...

, in the wake of that year's anti-racism protests.

Past editions

The decision to bowdlerize the OSPD's third edition by removing a large number of possibly offensive words necessitated a separate, unabridged word list for tournament use. The first edition of OWL was created by the NSA Dictionary Committee, chaired by

John Chew John Chew Hiang Chea (; born 4 October 1947) was the third Metropolitan Archbishop and Primate of the Province of Anglican Church in South East Asia as well as Bishop of Singapore. He retired as the 8th Bishop of Singapore on 4 October 2012. He ...

, and took effect on March 2, 1998. To avoid controversy, it was available for sale only to NSA members, and unlike the OSPD, did not include definitions. To provide additional value for tournament players, the OWL includes words whose base or inflected forms have up to nine letters, rather than the OSPD's eight. OSPD3 was created from OSPD2 by adding all appropriate words that had been added to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (MWCD) in the interim; OWL was then formed by restoring the possibly offensive words removed from OSPD3 and adding nine-letter words from MWCD. The 2014 update (OTCWL2014, also known as OWL3) added several thousand words from two new sources, Oxford Collegiate Dictionary Second Edition (OCD2) and Canadian Oxford Dictionary Second Edition (COD2). A minor update in 2016 (OTCWL2016, also known as OWL3.1) added over 1,000 nine-letter words. The 2018 update (NWL2018, or OWL4) added over 3,000 words, including additions to OSPD6 and MWCD, and ten-letter words from COD2. It was produced by NASPA in collaboration with Merriam-Webster, but, for the first time, under its own copyright.

Other word authorities

Unlike the ''

'', NWL is a list and does not include definitions. It contains words not included in ''OSPD'' because they are considered

offensive Offensive may refer to: * Offensive, the former name of the Dutch political party Socialist Alternative * Offensive (military), an attack * Offensive language ** Fighting words or insulting language, words that by their very utterance inflict inj ...

, and a number of other additional words (mostly registered trademarks). Print versions of NWL can be procured from the NASPA website by NASPA members only.

Word count

References

External links