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Back in May, the 2019 edition of Collins Scrabble Words (CSW2019) was released, with International tournaments adopting it from July 2019.

So I’ve now added it as an option for Word Helper. Just choose “Scrabble International” -> “2019 Tournament” in Step 3 “Choose your dictionary”.

If you have my iOS Word Finder app I’ll be updating that in the next few weeks. I have to stick to Apple’s rules for app updates so it takes slightly longer to make the changes.

I’ve also updated the International versions of my Free Cheat Sheets, and will be sending an email to newsletter subscribers with the new versions. If you’d like to sign up for the newsletter click here. I only send about one email a year on average so you won’t be overwhelmed!

And of course, here’s the traditional plug for my Scrabble Strategy book. If you’d like to support the site, please consider buying a copy.  It’s actually rather good, and makes a great gift 😉

Click here for the paperback version on Amazon

or click here for the Kindle version

or click here for the Apple iBooks version

Happy Scrabbling everyone,

Richard

Recently there have been quite a few changes to the dictionaries used in Scrabble and Words With Friends:

• Words With Friends have merged their US English and UK English dictionaries into a single dictionary
• For US Scrabble tournaments, the 2018 NASPA Word List (NWL) is now in use
• For US Scrabble home play, the 2018 Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (OSPD or “Merriam-Webster”) is now in use
• For US Scrabble school play, the 2018 School Scrabble Word List (SSWL) is now in use

I’ve now updated my Word Helper tool to allow you to choose from the above dictionaries (along with a couple of 2016 dictionaries which had slipped past me!)

[Edit: it seems the Words With Friends change has caused some confusion, so I’d better explain.

On about 13 March 2019, WWF released a new version of their app (both iOS and Android). In the new version, the US English and UK English dictionaries have been merged into one large combined English dictionary.

I presume this is to make it easier to play against opponents in different countries.  You no longer need to choose the dictionary, and each opponent can use both US and UK spellings.

If you haven’t yet updated your app, you won’t have seen the change yet, so my update may have been confusing!  But you really should update your WWF app, as your opponents will be using the new bigger dictionary, and until you update you’ll be stuck with the older smaller dictionaries and at a disadvantage.

I hope that explains it a little better.  If you still have queries, please contact me!

There will also be a new version of the International Scrabble dictionary (Collins Scrabble Words) due out in a few weeks time.  I’ll try to get an update out for that when it arrives.

If you have my iOS Word Finder app I’ll be updating that soon.  I have to stick to Apple’s rules for app updates so it takes quite a bit longer to update!

I’ve also updated my Free Cheat Sheets, and will be sending an email to newsletter subscribers with the new versions.  If you’d like to sign up for the newsletter click here.  I only send about one email a year on average so you won’t be overwhelmed!

While you’re here, I’d like to remind you about my Scrabble Strategy book.  It’s both entertaining and informative 🙂

Click here for the paperback version on Amazon

or click here for the Kindle version

or click here for the Apple iBooks version

I think that’s it for now.  Let me know if you have any questions!

Richard

I’ve just been notified by the company that hosts my webserver that they need to turn it off for about 10 minutes to replace the power supply that it is plugged into.

They will be doing this overnight between Wed 18 May and Thu 19 May.

In my local timezone (British Summer Time) this will be sometime between 5am and 8am Thu 19 May.

In Eastern Daylight Time, this will be between midnight and 3am Thu 19 May.

In Pacific Daylight Time, this will be between 9pm and midnight Wed 18 May.

It should only be off for about 10 minutes sometime within the three-hour window (they are unplugging and replugging all the servers in the rack, so they can’t predict exactly when mine will be rebooted).

So if the site isn’t available on those days, just wait 10 minutes and try again 🙂

Sorry for the inconvenience, but apparently a fault has developed with the power supply, so this should prevent unexpected interruptions down the road!

In the last year the Scrabble people have been very busy updating their dictionaries around the world!

In North America…

Last year (2014) there was a new Scrabble word list published by Merriam-Webster: the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary 5th edition (OSPD5).  This is now the official dictionary for home players of the Scrabble game in North America.

It’s a cut-down version of the Official Tournament and Club Word List 3rd edition (OTCWL3) – the longer tournament list also contains offensive words not suitable for home use.  The 3rd edition OTCWL was written in 2014 but wasn’t approved for tournament use until April 2015.

In the rest of the world…

In September 2015 the 4th edition of Collins Official Scrabble Words (CSW2015) was adopted as the official tournament dictionary outside North America.

I’ve had quite a few requests to add these dictionaries, as many apps are now switching to these dictionaries.

I’ve added versions of these dictionaries to Word Helper as:

• Scrabble USA: 2014 Merriam-Webster
• Scrabble USA: 2014 Tournament
• Scrabble International: 2015 Tournament

It’s been a bit hard, as the dictionary makers don’t always publish exactly which words have been added or removed.  But I’ve made my best efforts, based on the information available to me.

Because of the way I’ve compiled my dictionary, it’s possible that the apps you use might have slightly different words.  If you find a difference, please let me know and I’ll fix it!

All the other older dictionaries are still available to use.

NB. I’ve stopped using the label “home/school” for the Merriam-Webster OSPD, since most apps seem to refer to it now as Merriam-Webster or MW.

Anyone visiting the site recently from a country in the European Union may have noticed one of those annoying ‘this site uses cookies’ bars at the bottom of the screen.

These are popping up everywhere as a result of an EU law.  I’ve tried to resist putting one on the site for as long as possible, as they are bloody annoying!

Sadly yesterday my advertising provider (Google Adsense – who display all the adverts on the site) told me that I have to have one of these cookie warnings if I show their adverts.  So the annoying bar has to be there 🙁

But I’ve tried to make it as unobtrusive as possible, and once you click the ‘got it’ button it should disappear for a year.

To be clear, nothing has changed with cookies on the site.  I still use them to display the adverts, to check how many people visit the site, and to store user preferences.  I don’t do anything untoward with them.  It’s just this annoying EU law I have to comply with.

I’ve just done another major update of the Word Helper site.  For most of you, you may not see much difference.  But it you access Word Helper from a mobile phone, hopefully you should find it much, much easier to navigate!

As a reminder, if you use an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, you may still find my two native iOS apps easier to use:

Word Finder (for Scrabble, Words with Friends, etc)

The Crossword Solver

But for users of Android, Windows Phone, etc, the mobile-responsive design of Word Helper should make it usable on the move now 🙂

There are a few very small changes to the layout for the main desktop site.  Sorry about that – I know that change is often unwelcome – but I’ve kept them to a minimum, and they were unavoidable in order to make the site change automatically to whatever size screen you view it on.

I’ve tested the site thoroughly on my desktop computer, my iPhone, and my iPad, and it seems to work well.  But if you see any problems, let me know.  A screenshot of how the site looks on your device can also help me solve any problems!

After many years of running this site for Scrabble, Words with Friends, and other similar word games, I decided it was time to spread the net wider.

Today I’ve created a new section The Crossword Solver.  As the name suggests, you can use it to solve crossword clues when you’re stuck.

Just put in the letters you’ve already found, and question marks for the blanks, and it will show all the words in the dictionary which could fit in that position.  For example ‘?X?M?L?’ would find ‘EXAMPLE’.

Of course, you still have to work out which of the possibilities best fits the clue, but we wouldn’t want to take all the fun out of the crossword would we 🙂

As usual, you can also download The Crossword Solver as an iPhone and iPad app if that’s more convenient.

I’m grateful to Lisa (one of the users of my Word Finder iPhone app) for pointing out that Words With Friends have recently updated their dictionary.

So I’ve just tweaked the word list for Word Helper to accommodate the changes.

They seem to have added 50 new words – many of them from the official Scrabble dictionary (such as AIRSHOW and WETSUIT), and some presumably because they’re in common use by the users of the app (e.g. SHIZZLE and SEXTING!)

They’ve also removed 11 words.  In common with their previous removals, these seem to all be words that can be used as racially derogative terms.

I’m working on an update to the Word Finder iPhone app at the moment, and the new dictionary will be in the next release 🙂

If you’ve visited Word Helper over the last couple of days you may have noticed all has not been well.

It started on Tuesday when I did a routine upgrade to the web server.  It should have taken less than 2 minutes and then been back up as normal.  Sadly things didn’t go smoothly, and the server failed to reboot.

I then tried to start my backup web server that I keep for such occasions, and I swapped over to that server.  Unfortunately I found that I hadn’t updated that server when I moved Scrabble Helper to Word Helper, so it didn’t have the Word Helper site on it.  As a result anyone visiting Word Helper got redirected to my main company homepage (Richard Loxley Ltd).  I tried to restore the Word Helper site from my backups, but then discovered a problem with my backups!

So I had to get the original server back up.  It took about 2 hours, and then it can take a while for all the DNS servers on the internet to notice the original server is back up, so some people saw the Richard Loxley Ltd page for longer than that.  Oops – sorry 🙁

I then had to fix the bigger problems with the original server, which I’ve been doing over the last 2 days.  Luckily I was able to do that without too much downtime – but I did have to restart the server several times over the last 2 days, so you may have noticed a few occasions when the page didn’t respond for a minute or two.

I believe that everything is back to normal now.  If you’re still having problems then please contact me and I’ll try to sort it out.

Sorry for messing up 🙁

If you keep up to date with the news, you might have just come across a disturbing story!

According to the BBC news, the value of all the Scrabble tiles have just been changed!

Woah!  Really?

No, not really.  Not so fast BBC.

What they are reporting is a piece of research that says the values ought to be changed, if they were to reflect which letters are in most common usage in English.

The actual research is in fact fascinating, and well worth a read 🙂

Of course, we all know (or should know!) that the points value of a tile doesn’t have much being on its actual worth.  For example ‘S’ and the blank tile are worth far more than all the others, because they enable you to play other words more easily!

And that’s just one of the tips you’ll find in my Scrabble book 🙂