Word Trouble In The Land Of Scrabble

Fascinating insight into the commercial pressure around the words you can and can’t play in Scrabble over on FiveThrityEight. Turns out there are two lists – the book of words you can buy (the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary) and the Official Word List (used in competition). And they are no longer in agreement:

The Official Tournament and Club Word List (OWL) governs tournament play, and is not made readily available to the public. The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (OSPD) is for casual and family play, and is sold in bookstores. Aside from expurgated words — offensive or trademarked words omitted from the OSPD — these dictionaries are meant to be identical. But this time they aren’

So it should be a simple matter to correct the typos (which must cause havoc in a game “I know repeccted isn’t a word, but it’s in the word list)? No. Because you don;t have a machine readable copy of either list, and in case Hasbro claims copyright on the list of words!

The biggest issue among competitive players is the lack of a publicly available electronic version of the new list. While Merriam-Webster publishes the OWL and the OSPD, Hasbro owns the rights to Scrabble in the U.S. and claims copyright on the word lists. Stefan Fatsis, also a Scrabble player, wrote recently in Slate about these intellectual property issues, and Hasbro’s maybe dubious claim. Nevertheless, Hasbro is protecting the lists like never before.