Lexifind presently supports three word lists:
TWL, SOWPODS and OSPD4:
TWL stands for Tournament Word List, a list of words used
for tournament-level Scrabble®
play in the United States, Canada, Thailand and Israel. The version of TWL used on this site is
more precisely known as TWL06, to distinguish it from TWL98, an earlier version of the TWL list.
TWL06 is the most recent version of TWL as of this writing (February, 2010). Other names used for this same list
include TWL2 (the number 2 is added to distinguish this list from the earlier version of TWL),
OTCWL2 (Official Tournament and Club Word List 2), and OWL2 (Official Word List 2).
SOWPODS is a list of words used for English language
tournament-level Scrabble®
play in nations other than the U.S., Canada, Thailand and Israel. The name SOWPODS is not an
acronym; rather, it is an anagram of the combined acronyms of two earlier lists that were
used in its construction:
OSPD (Official Scrabble Player's Dictionary) and OSW (Official Scrabble Words, which was
used in Britain). Most of the English-speaking world outside North America has
adopted SOWPODS in place of those earlier lists.
OSPD4 stands for Official Scrabble Word List, version 4, a list of words used for U.S. National
School Scrabble Championship competitions. The expanded version of this list (which includes
words having more than 8 letters, as well as shorter words) is almost the same as TWL06, except that 300+ TWL words
that are considered to be offensive have been removed from OSPD4.
The official version of OSPD4 includes only words having from 2 to 8 letters, but the version used
by Lexifind is one that has been expanded to include words having from 9 to 15 letters, as well.
Although there is presently no "official" version of OSPD4 that contains these longer words, there is a desktop
computer program called Zyzzyva that is used in National School Scrabble Championships,
the word lists for which are maintained in consultation with members of U.S. Scrabble organizations, and that
program's OSPD4 list is as close to an official OSPD4
list with long words in it as is available as of this writing (February, 2010).
The next planned update to the OSPD4 list of this program is expected to result in a few minor revisions to the list,
involving a total of nine words.
In anticipation of this, Lexifind has revised the OSPD4 list that it uses internally,
so that it reflects those imminent changes.
Some other word finder Web sites are, as of this writing (early February, 2010) still using the program's presently-released
OSPD4 list, so you may, if you are very observant, notice these slight differences between Lexifind's
list and other lists identified as OSPD4. For specifics, please use our contact form and we'll be happy to send you
some links to information about the nature of these revisions.
Lexifind has no status or role, official or unofficial, in the maintenance of the OSPD4 list, and has no
formal connection to those maintaining that list, but we are attempting to
keep as current as possible on the evolving status of the most accepted version available,
so that our site is as current and accurate as we can make it. Because there is an informal aspect to this
process, we have attempted to provide some background regarding it, but while this information is accurate
to the best of our knowledge, it can only be a view from the outside looking in, and therefore not the kind
of authoritative description that might be provided by those directly involved in defining and maintaining
the OSPD4 list.