I’m playing online Scrabble on my iTouch, and I run into the occasional word that I think should be in the online dictionary (so far my suggestions are meteorite and zen for words that should be in the dictionary). I went to the Scrabble website, but there doesn’t seem to be any method by which you can suggest that they have missed a word. What do you guys think - just leave it alone, or is there a way you can do this?
As John Hodgeman once put it: Scrabble is not a game of words. Scrabble is a game of words which appear in the Scrabble dictionary.
There are quite a few words which aren’t in there, and it’s not a matter of words being forgotten about. Every omission is deliberate. If you don’t want to use their dictionary, just go to dictionary.com or whatever.
Asking them to add 9-letter words is a fairly huge request. At least, my paper dictionary only has 2- to 8-letter words.
Words of nine to fifteen letters are valid Scrabble words but most of them come up so rarely that the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary doesn’t bother to include them. The only 9+ words are inflected forms of shorter words (i.e., words formed with -er, -est, -s, -es, -ed, or -ing). For home play, longer words should be looked up in an ordinary dictionary if the need arises, or you can check an online resource like this one. For tournament play, they can look words up by computer in the Official Word List (OWL) that has all words up to 15 letters. Trying to add all the 9 to 15-letter words to the Official Scrabble Dictionary would more than double its size.
You may have a point about zen. It’s usually capitalized, but The Cambridge Dictionary lists it as a common adjective (as in “It’s very zen”).
I’ve always been bothered by the absence of “zia”. It is the symbol that appears on the state flag and license plates of New Mexico, and is always used in that state as a single, self-standing noun, the same as cross or star. But dictionaries treat it as “Zia sun symbol”, with Zia being the name of an Indian tribe. Thus, it is one of those words like Realtor, that needs to be capitalized.
This would have been a good thread for the ‘need answer fast!’ tag.
Whilst this is true, the size on a computerised dictionary shouldn’t be that much of an issue, and perhaps they should make an attempt to put the whole OWL in there.
I am outraged at their oversight of “kwyjibo.”
I’ve been bitching about the lack of “zen” in the Scrabble dictionary for years now. It’s a word dammit!
Alas, the ship had well and truly sailed by the time I thought of this thread. It was probably for a shitload of points, too (hey, there’s another word that should be in the dictionary - “shitload”!).
Why not, says I.
It’s totally a word. Maybe not an original English word, but who cares about that at this point? Zen is as much a word in English as Beret is by now.