Responding to the updated answer to “What are the permissible two-letter words in Scrabble?”, the official list continues to change. There WERE 96 official words until March 1, 2006, at which time 5 new words (FE KI OI QI ZA) were added, bringing the list up to 101.
To make it even more confusing, this official list only applies to Tournament and Club play in North America. Most English-speaking Scrabble players in the rest of the world use an expanded list (called variously SOWPODS, Collins, Collins Scrabble Words), which have an additional 22 two-letter words:
CH DA DI EA EE FY GI GU IO JA KY NY OB OO OU PO ST TE UG UR YU ZO.
The next update to the North American word list is not anticipated until 2013 or thereafter.
Just out of curiosity, does the official Scrabble Dictionary give definitions for these ‘words’? Last time I checked, one of the requirements for ‘words’ in the English language was the presence of at least one vowel…
I’d ***really ***like to know what ‘CH’ and ‘ST’ mean.
And why stop at 101? Why not just add the other 575 two-letter combinations in, and be done with it?
Well, it seems the list changes every seven years, and there are five new words each time. So that’s (676-101)/5 * 7 = 575/5 * 7 = 115 * 7 = 805 years. Add that to 2006, and you find that it would be in 2811. I don’t think you have to worry.
You can find definitions for the North American 2-letter words at: http://www.hasbro.com/scrabble/en_US/2LetterList.cfm (FYI: Hasbro owns the rights to SCRABBLE in North America, Mattel owns Scrabble everywhere else).
The best way to see what words are acceptable (AND definitions) is to download the free ZYZZYVA anagrams & study program, created by Michael Thelen, from: http://www.zyzzyva.net/. Zyzzyva allows you to check words in the North American word list (OWL), as well as SOWPODS/Collins, and even French).
words are added to the official scrabble dictionary because they are in a number of source dictionaries. it’s up to the lexicographers of those source dictionaries to decide which words are words–so you need to argue with them. good luck!
The history of how words make it into the official Scrabble dictionary is convoluted and obtuse. At this point, words are official Scrabble words because they are official Scrabble words. It’s easier to add words than to remove them. AFAIK, abbreviations were never included.
But the words are just game pieces for playing the game. Their definitions or use is somewhat irrelevant. A good non-technical book on the subject is “Word Freak” by Stephan Fatsis, he covers the confusion about the official words pretty well.
Not so, both because there are chromatic syllables (though the set is incomplete) and because SO is wrong – it’s SOL.
Taking the key of C as an example,
DO C
DI C♯
RA D♭
RE D
RI D♯
ME E♭
MI E
FA F
FI F♯
SE G♭
SOL G
SI G♯
LE A♭
LA A
LI A♯
TE B♭
TI B
SI is also found as an older form of TI. There are also alternate systems that include the notes that are missing above, plus double flats and double sharps.
Still, it gets back to what is the definition of “word”. If you’re going to accept fa as a “word”, then there is no logical ground to reject qi. Or ki.
