[NSA logo]

Official Long Words List

The Official Long Words List includes all acceptable 10-15 letter words NOT already in the Official Tournament and Club Word List.

The Official Long Words List has been compiled and created by the Dictionary Committee of the National Association. As of June 16, 2003, this list became the ONLY acceptable official long word list for use at sanctioned National Association Clubs and Tournaments. Players and Directors may order it (beginning May 23rd, 2003) as a spiral-bound book from NSA Word Gear, Inc. for $15.

The word list is available from this site for personal, noncommercial use as a 600K download with MD5 digest (authentication) code 2f218ad494145171c29b3fdf9cf45993. The availability of the word list as a download is not meant to suggest that any copy of the list is acceptable for use in word adjudication. For reasons of quality control, tournament and club directors must use the officially printed edition.

If you acquire a copy earlier than June 16, 2003, The Official Long Words List may be used by sanctioned NSA Directors to adjudicate tournaments as early as April 1, 2003.

This word list was first made available online as a committee draft in late 2002, accompanied by the following announcement:

This proposed 10-15 letter word list was compiled using the entries from Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition. Special attention was given to the proper inflections for words that were irregular plurals, words on undefined lists ("sublists" such as words beginning with ANTI-, RE-, OVER-, OUT-, UN, etc.), entries that were out of normal alphabetical order, and words labeled as "called also" but not given their own separate entries. Rulings on inflections of many questionable words and on all "sublist" words were received from a senior editor at Merriam-Webster.

Even though there was much careful checking of the 10-15 letter words that met the criteria for acceptability in club and tournament play it is possible that omissions and errors could have occurred. We would like to solicit from the NSA membership any instances of such errors or omissions that you may discover.

This provisional list will be available for inspection until at least January 1, 2003. During that time NSA members are welcome to send examples of any words that are erroneously listed or that were missed and that should be on the list. While you are always free to contact any member of the Dictionary Committee regarding matters pertaining to the official word lists for club and tournament play, for purposes of informing us of corrections to the provisional 10-15 letter list please send your messages to the following e-mail address which is being used exclusively for this purpose:

jpate@cheerful.com

We want the 10-15 letter list, when it is officially adopted, to be as accurate as possible so we welcome your help in this endeavor.

December 15th, 2002

The posted list has been revised, omitting 333 words which were already listed in OTCWL. Our thanks to all the players who pointed out this problem, the first of whom was Mitch Bayersdorfer.

March 30th, 2003

Richard Buck pointed out that the list erroneously included ENCEPHALOMYO and KERATOCONJUN, which have been removed.

HASBRO is the owner of the registered SCRABBLE^® trademark in the United States and Canada. © 2008 HASBRO. All rights reserved. "SCRABBLE^® Brand Crossword Game" is the proper way to refer to this unique group of word games and related properties marketed by HASBRO. "SCRABBLE^®" is not a generic term. To use it as such is not only misleading but also does injustice to the company responsible for the trademark's longtime popularity. All we ask is that when you mean SCRABBLE^® Brand Crossword Game, you say so.

The SCRABBLE^® trademark is owned by J.W. Spear and Sons, PLC, a subsidiary of Mattel, Inc. outside of the United States and Canada.

For more information about SCRABBLE^® or the NSA, or to comment on or correct the contents of this page, please e-mail: info@scrabble-assoc.com
To report technical difficulties in reading this page, please contact webmaster John Chew at: jjchew@math.utoronto.ca