Over the past decades, many changes have been made to the original Scrabble dictionary since its first publication in 1978 by Merriam-Webster in collaboration with the National Scrabble Association (NSA).  It was developed as a result of the start of national scrabble clubs and tournaments who needed a standard point of reference for regulatory play.  Basically, a go-to Scrabble dictionary was deemed necessary to validate permissible words and to have no word challenges remain unanswered.  It would seem rather straightforward to agree on a regular dictionary of words to be used as an authoritative book during gameplay, however, many changes have occurred  to the official dictionary.  Controversy has been present on the continual spectrum of permissible Scrabble words.  The use of particular words and their alleged questionable definitions has enveloped Scrabble enthusiasts in an ongoing debate that has resolved in satisfied and not-so-satisfied players and company representatives alike. Controversy and Scrabble?  How is that possible one might ask, but it is true.  Words speak louder than actions, which in this case, certain words have caused quite a stir in the world of Scrabble.

INSTRUCTIONS

1. From the drop down menu, select the appropriate dictionary depending on which game you are playing and where (which country) you are playing from–TWL06, SOWPODS, OSPD4, ENABLE, OWL2.
2. In the RACK box, enter your letters to find the best possible word by clicking on SEARCH. Use a question mark to designate a blank tile.
3. If you want to use a specific beginning or ending for a word by using existing letters on the board, enter the letter or set of letters that your word must begin or end with in the PREFIX or SUFFIX box accordingly.
4. Select SCORE to filter results by maximum point value, or select LENGTH to filter results by the number of letters in a word.

The Scrabble game manufacturers at the time had all the words from five collegiate dictionaries compiled into the first Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, or called OSPD for short.  The compilation process during this time was done by hand and not by any type of computer, which resulted in many errors and omissions.  This Scrabble dictionary printing problems created more issues and debate amongst competitive and casual players.  One example, according to wikipedia, is that the word granola was in all five of the collegiate dictionaries except it was not present in the OSPD.  A second edition of the Scrabble dictionary called OSPD 2 was released in 1991.  Currently, the Scrabble dictionary is called OSPD 4.  It is important to note that OSPD is utilized by speakers of American and Canadian English.  The five collegiate dictionaries that were used in the compilation of the very first version of the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary were:  Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (1973),  Funk & Wagnalls (1973), The Random House College Dictionary (1968), Webster’s New World Dictionary (1970), and The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1969).  At the time, there were numerous words that were deemed offensive to many individuals and various community groups.  Furthermore, all five of these collegiate dictionaries that were used in the compilation process were printed during the 1960s and 1970s.  This meant that certain words and their meanings actually had certain cultural definitions based on that particular era.  This word debacle will probably continue since our developing world continually grows and the creation of subcultures and various trends will pave the way for many more new words and new meanings.  Hasbro made an announcement in 1994 about removing close to 200 words from the OPSD that were considered offensive by different community groups.  This definitely sparked a Scrabble scandal.  The National Scrabble Association refused to omit any words since it would make a big impact on validity and word usage during gameplay.  These offensive words, which included ethnic slurs as well as playground phrases, caused Hasbro to publish two official versions of the Scrabble dictionary; one version would be for casual players to use at school or at home, and the other version would be used at Scrabble clubs and during Scrabble tournaments.  The National Scrabble Association made a compromise to allow for the dictionary version used by the clubs and during tournaments, which contains 120,302 words, to still include the “offensive” words.  However, these offensive words would be printed in this version of their dictionary without their definitions.  As of today, the current edition of the Scrabble Dictionary, which was published in 2005, is in fact the fourth version.  It has 4000 new words.  So, it is always important to continue to learn new words and their meanings to never stop improving your Scrabble game.