Discussion about the TWL and SOWPODS categories in our english.dic

Today I have been chatting on Skype with Apollonius who had some questions about the categories in the english.dic.

He told me that he would like to discuss with us some aspects of the TWL and SOWPODS categories, because he thinks that the English dictionary maybe could be improved.

I'm very glad to have Apollonius with us. His mother tongue is American English and I think he is somebody who might give us some interesting points of view.

So let's start a prolific discussion about the english.dic here! Welcome everybody!



Yours sincerely, Bussinchen

Dear Apollonius,

could you please start our discussion by giving us a short introduction about what TWL and SOWPODS is. As most of us speak German as mother tongue, maybe not everybody knows very well what is the difference between these categories in our english.dic.

In the meantime we can read a little bit on the following websites:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Sc...yers_Dictionary
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_To..._Club_Word_List
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOWPODS
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tournament_Word_List

• http://zyzzyva.net/wordlists.shtml


And please read again the discussion we had in May 2010 in our German thread:

• The english Scrabble3D dictionary: english.dic (3)
• The english Scrabble3D dictionary: english.dic (2)

Zitat von Apollonius on SKINS!

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I read the wiki about the dictionary, or the parts which have been finished, and it sounds very nice indeed. I can't say that I understand everything completely yet, but I'm sure my concerns have already been addressed. I did notice though, that many, many, many TWL words were showing up as valid in the SOWPODS dictionary, and vice versa. In fact, only the words that I added to one or the other dictionaries showed up as exclusive to that dictionary. ALL of the other ones showed up in both...it was as if the TWL and SOWPODS dictionaries were identical.

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Could you please give us an example?

I'm sorry to be away from here today! I usually have help at my work, but today I had to cover for my partner.

And about the dictionary, I was having a few issues with the English one in Scrabble3D. After talking with Bussinchen though, I think I have some illumination. :)

First of all, it appears as though there was a slight misunderstanding of the way the English dictionary is divided. Because there is such a wide difference in the vocabulary of an Englishman vs. an American, there are actually 2 main official dictionaries for the English language. The TWL dictionary is for the North American lexicon, and SOWPODS is for the UK, Australia, New Zealand, etc. While there are many more words in the SOWPODS dictionary (like, about 100,000 more), there are also many words that are exclusive to TWL. Both regions have developed their own slang terms and other words, plus SOWPODS has many old English words that are not used in N. America.

See, it's all because English is spoken in so many places, and has developed different dialects, spellings, and vocabularies.

For instance, in N. America we would call a meat sausage on a bun a "HOTDOG", but we shouldn't be able to use that word in a SOWPODS game because it isn't in that dictionary. Conversely, in the UK they might say 'Subdue your "FRETTINGS"', but they shouldn't be able to play that word in a TWL game because it isn't in that dictionary.

So therefore, it might be necessary to have 2 English dictionaries instead of just one!

I noticed that TWL could not be un-checked...you could either run TWL AND SOWPODS, or just TWL. Bussinchen explained what happened with that.

Dear Appolonius,

I compared the SOWPODS and TWL06 word lists on my computer and it turned out that TWL06 is fully contained in SOWPODS.

In the Wikipedia article about SOWPODS it is explained that this is the name for the combination of TWL and the former British CWS list. It seems there is no special British list any more, so it would not make much sense to establish one for Scrabble3D.

TWL and SOWPODS, while having a lot of overlap, are two separate dictionaries.

I'm positive!

SOWPODS may be comprised of both British and American words, but there are MANY THOUSANDS of words in the TWL dictionary which are NOT in the SOWPODS one!

Maybe this will help:
This is an image from my Scrabble dictionary (which has been updated since 2006).



Notice how some words have a "*" at the end, some have a "$", and some have a "#"?

* = found in both dictionaries
$ = found ONLY in the TWL disctionary
# = found ONLY in the SOWPODS dictionary

I think what you might have gotten ahold of is a combination of both dictionaries, but let's look at some numbers.

According to my dictionary, there are 178,691 words in TWL, 206,594 in SOWPODS, and 253,277 words in a combination dictionary.

[EDIT] My dictionary was WRONG! I just found a newer online scrabble dictionary here: http://wordsolver.net/. It would appear as though SOWPODS has indeed changed at some point to include all of the TWL words. I honestly had no idea, but according to that online dictionary, every single one of the "exclusively TWL" words that I tried to find were showing as legal in SOWPODS.

CRAZY.

Sorry about that.

Maybe there is some confusion concerning the meaning of SOWPODS. Here are the first few lines of an internet site of the NSA (National Scrabble Association) (http://www.scrabble-assoc.com/sowpods/):

"SOWPODS" represents a combination of the Official SCRABBLE Players Dictionary (OSPD) and the Official SCRABBLE® Words (OSW), the former British word source. As of January 2003, all British clubs and tournaments officially use the OSW-I, or Official SCRABBLE® Words, International, which is now equivalent to SOWPODS. In other words, the British and most of the SCRABBLE® game-playing world use SOWPODS on a regular daily basis. However, North Americans, along with only a couple of other regions, continue to use a different word source.

I guess that your Scrabble Dictionary uses the name SOWPODS for the former British word list OSW. But this is not the official meaning of SOWPODS.

The name SOWPODS is an anagram of the combination of the two acronyms OSPD and OSW.

The current version of SOWPODS contains exactly 267,751 words (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOWPODS).
Your number of words in TWL06 is correct: 178,691.

Zitat von Apollonius

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[EDIT] My dictionary was WRONG! I just found a newer online scrabble dictionary here: http://wordsolver.net/. It would appear as though SOWPODS has indeed changed at some point to include all of the TWL words. I honestly had no idea, but according to that online dictionary, every single one of the "exclusively TWL" words that I tried to find were showing as legal in SOWPODS.

CRAZY.

Sorry about that.

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Yup. It sems as though I was wrong, and you were right.

Ah, so the SOWPODS dictonary is actually called "OSW-I"...but they wound up calling it SOWPODS anyway. The ORIGINAL SOWPODS did not have words like "HOTDOG" or "BEDAMNS" in it, but they added them later.

"All British clubs and tournaments officially use the OSW-I, or Official Scrabble Words, International, which is now equivalent to SOWPODS."

Thank you.

I just saw there is exactly one word missing in the english.dic of Scrabble3D, namely PHOCOMELIES.
I have no idea how this could happen. Funny!

That word does not show as playable in any dictionary according to LeXpert (the program I had been using), but I just downloaded "Zyzzyva", which only lists it is valid in CSW12.

SO. COMPLICATED.