Chezmoi and Gladiators News

The provisional word list for school, church, etc. list has come out. They removed some words that are surprising to me. Hopefully they will get some blowback and restore a few. For what it’s worth, I only play using the tourney and club lexicon for North American, because that is the list I’d encounter in a club or tourney setting.

The lexicon on this site known as “OSPD” is actually now the list known as NSWL2023 (provisional). They will finalize this list in a few weeks, and I’ll make another minor update.

This list is not used on the Gladiators sister site since that is a tourney site.

The raw statistics:

Total # of words : 195763

Adding 4618 words

Removing 331 words

On ChezMoi, press “members” button and then click “USEFUL SCRABBLE STUFF” and you’ll find a link near the top that has the complete transition list. I will post a note and update that list if any changes occur with the final word list.

CSW (SOWPODS) and OSPD coming soon, too.

First up, installed TODAY: OWL (NWL2023). The “OWL” (Official Word List) lexicon on Chez and Gladiators have both been updating. Please report any issues on the forum, or with a comment here.

In near future, OSPD (I still need to get a complete list in a single file), and presumably, the international list (the one called SOWPODS here). I’ve let the SOWPODS list from a few years ago continue… all the 2021 CSW update did was remove some words considered offensive. When the next update comes out and I upload it to the site, those words will be removed at last, plus thousands more added.

This new OWL/NWL2023 lexicon, the most popular on Chez and Glad, is the official word list for use in club and tournament play in North America. Stats about the change:

There are too many to list here. Useful transition lists will appear on club sites soon, I would hope.

I posted the full added/removed word list (from OWL 2020 list to 2023) on Chez: click the “members” link, then press the “Useful Scrabble Stuff” link, and a page will open with the complete set of added (top) and removed (bottom) words.

A tiny sampling of newbies (two of these I tried in the past month…!)

bae
coulda
dox
fam
fav
finna
folx
fugly
glamp
goy
guac
haos
hos
hoss
hygge
jedi
jiaos
loc
mpox
noob
outie
pedi
pwn
roid
tasered
thwap
vax
vaxx
vaxxed
vaxxes
vaxxing
wanna
yaje
yajes
zonkey
zuke

The site’s CSW lexicon (still labeled on the site as SOWPODS) will be updated within two months.

Here’s a reference for the CSW lexicon: http://www.scrabbleplayers.org/w/SOWPODS

Unfortunately, I haven’t run across any information regarding the added words or any removed words (as happened to the North American word list recently). Officially, this word list goes into effect in club and tournament play on January 6th. This pertains to non-North America only, for the most part.

So I’ll update the site to conform to the around the start of the year. I’ll add a note here if I find a reference to the upcoming changes (or someone can post a comment with a link).

Also, today I revamped the way the Exchange/Pass works on the site. I’ve been meaning to do this for some time (years!). The main purpose of the changes are to make it easier to see what you are doing (better text/clarity for what you are exchanging and what you are keeping), and to prevent people from accidentally passing (keeping all tiles) when they meant to exchange a few tiles. I have done that myself a couple times (d’oh!), and I got a report of at least one other player doing that this week, so that the time has come to clean this up, and I’ve done that finally!

The new blue Exchange button will not work unless you’ve checked at least one tile for exchange.

Below the exchange button, there is still a PASS button, which is necessary at times such as when you have no legal play. Read the warning before passing and keeping all your tiles, however!

And there is still confirmation required before either an EXCHANGE or a PASS.

On both Chez and Gladiators, lexicons have been updated to the 2020 word lists.

SCHOOL lexicon: OSPD lexicon is known as NSWL2020 (school word list). There are 4178 word additions and 174 deletions since the last update.

CLUB and TOURNAMENT lexicon: no additions, and removal of 236 words deemed offensive by a committee. This made the news rounds last summer when it transpired. I’m not sure why their list has 236 words removed, but on our site, my Java lexicon updater shows 259 removals. I may have missed a transitory correction last year.

But either way, if you want to know what changed, then from the Chez play panel, press the ‘member’ button along the left, then click “Useful Scr*bble Stuff” and go from there.

I’d say the remove word list is not for the timid, except many of us have been playing those words for decades.

From NPR regarding the changes:

https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice/2020/07/08/889246690/scrabble-association-bans-racial-ethnic-slurs-from-its-official-word-list

A new word list is coming, to be known as NWL2020, for club and tournament use in North America. There may be a few new words that aren’t on the site yet, but the main gist of this update is to remove a set of words deemed by a committee to meet the criteria for being sufficiently offensive. These words will only be removed for those using the North American lexicon (know as OWL or other variants in recent years).

Since my goal with the site is to maintain lexicons valid for club or tournament play around the world (mostly in English), the site will move to that list within a few weeks.

For a summary of what will be removed and other lists which one may find useful, please see this page at the Seattle Scrabble Club.

I’ll post an update in a few weeks when the update is live on the site.

–Ben

Welcome to the new blog with a purpose of supporting Chezmoi and Gladiators players from an external site. Please bookmark this home page of the blog so you can get news even if the regular site is down.

Categories of articles will include the following, with more added as deemed useful: News, Help, Reference, and Around the World.

So the first news of importance: due to staffing shortages at our hosting company, we now deem it essential that you make sure you update your e-mail address on both Chezmoi and at Gladiators. Do this by using the “settings” button and edit your e-mail address. Make sure there are no typos! And press Save Settings when you’ve gotten it right.

This is a ‘just in case’ action while staffing at our hosting company is impacted by the pandemic.

It will be possible to post comments, but they must be moderated for content because web robots show up and post spam and virus links. So don’t expect a reply soon, we’ll visit every few days during quiet times to check, and during busy times (like when we changed to a new hosting company for the site), we’ll be here often to post updates and answer questions in comments.