OTCWL2

The second edition of the Official Tournament and Club Word List (OTCWL2, also known as OWL2, or TWL2) was the official word reference for words of up to nine letters and their inflections from 2006–03–01 to 2015–04–09. The corresponding reference for longer words was the Long List.

It was modified in 2014 to include the word GEOCACHE and its inflections GEOCACHES, GEOCACHED, and GEOCACHING as a result of the 2014 SCRABBLE Word Showdown. The modified word list was referred to as OTCWL2.1, OWL2.1, or TWL2.1.

OTCWL2 was edited by Merriam-Webster based on research conducted by the Dictionary Committee (whose wiki page goes into the lexicon’s history in greater detail), under the chairmanship of Jim Pate, published by and exclusively available to NASPA members from Merriam-Webster.

Availability

The tournament word list was not available to the public in electronic form; it was available in print from Merriam-Webster. The electronic word list was available to authorized SCRABBLE developers. If you are not sure if you have the correct version of the digital file, here are some statistics you can check. There are currently 101 2-letter words, 1015 3, 4030 4, 8938 5, 15788 6, 24029 7, 29766 8, 29150 9, 22326 10, 16165 11, 11417 12, 7750 13, 5059 14 and 3157 15, for a total of 178,691 words. (13 of those words are not playable using the standard 100 tiles: CLASSLESSNESSES, KNICKKNACK(S), PIZZAZZ(ES), PIZZAZZY, POSSESSEDNESSES, RAZZAMATAZZ(ES), RAZZMATAZZ(ES), SENSELESSNESSES, STRESSLESSNESS.) The master file lists all words in lower case in alphabetical order, one per line, with each line terminated by a Unix line break. It is 1763167 bytes long and has BSD checksum ('cksum -o 1') 12722, System V checkum ('cksum -o 2') 24638, 32-bit CRC ('cksum -o 3') 2022312244, ISO/IEC 8802-3:1989 checksum ('cksum') 427611949 and MD5 checksum dfd408f47cc1a324eb0ab5577910e4e3.

Errata

Incorrectly omitted from OTCWL2: CRABAPPLE (p. 98), CRABAPPLES (p. 98), DEVELOPPES (p. 118), GODDAMNDEST (p. 186), MUNCHABLES (p. 279) and VIREONINES (p.485).

Incorrectly included in OTCWL2: CRABABBLE (p. 98), CRABABBLES (p. 98), GODAMNDEST (p. 186) and WEAPONEERED (p. 491).