The first edition of the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary was published in 1978, in response to the growing tournament Scrabble scene and the need for a comprehensive (not to mention comprehensible) standard. OSPD (and its frightening, bloated, British cousin, the Chambers dictionary) is certainly no exception.īut history first, and controversy second. The equivalent work for French-speaking Scrabble players, on both sides of the pond, is the Officiel du Scrabble published by Larousse under the aegis of the Fédération internationale du Scrabble francophone, which does include definitions.Īny work that must be used as a standard by competitive Scrabble players (calling this group " dysfuctional" would be like calling a dead person "somewhat lethargic") is guaranteed to generate controversy. In fact, both lists include both British and American spelling variants, but there are differences with the obscure two- and three-letter words that are so vital for tournament play. Chambers also publish Official Scrabble Words, a definition-free wordlist drawn from the dictionary including all valid inflected forms of words from 2 to 9 letters, and Official Scrabble Lists, which lists words on the basis of various game-related criteria.įor transatlantic tournaments (including the anglophone version of the World Championships), players are allowed to use words from both British and American lists.
Chambers dictionary scrabble professional#
Even among English speakers, the standard dictionary used for official tournament Scrabble in the UK and Ireland is the Chambers dictionary, which has traditionally been favoured for word games over the various editions of the OED (generally, if unfoundedly, considered the most authoritative British English dictionary - professional writers and their ilk tend to go for the single-volume Longman or Collins English dictionaries, but I digress) because the latter list all their headwords with initial caps, making it difficult to distinguish proper nouns. " Eveywhere" in hoopy_frood's writeup should be understood in the American sense of the word, since Scrabble is available in many different language versions.
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