Dictionary Sources

A word solver is only as trustworthy as the list behind it. This page sets out exactly which word list feeds which tool, where each list comes from, and when we last reviewed it. If a word shows up in our results, you should be able to trace why.

Why This Page Exists

Most free word tools will not tell you what dictionary they are using. You type letters, you get words, and you have no way to know whether the list is a current tournament standard or a text file someone downloaded a decade ago.

That matters. A word that is perfectly legal in Collins may be rejected in a North American tournament. A word that was valid in the 2014 list may have been removed since. If a tool will not name its sources, you cannot judge its answers.

So we name ours.

The Word Lists We Use

OTCWL / TWL — Scrabble, North America

The Official Tournament and Club Word List is the standard for sanctioned Scrabble play in the United States and Canada. It is maintained under the authority of the North American Word Game Players Association and contains roughly 190,000 entries of two to fifteen letters.

This list is deliberately more conservative than its international counterpart. It is the list our Scrabble US option uses.

Collins / SOWPODS — Scrabble, international

Collins Scrabble Words is the standard outside North America and in most international competition. It is published by HarperCollins and is substantially larger than OTCWL — roughly 280,000 entries — because it incorporates British, Australian, and other regional vocabulary.

If a word fails under Scrabble US but passes under Scrabble UK, this difference is almost always why. It is the list our Scrabble UK option uses.

Words With Friends

Words With Friends uses its own dictionary, maintained by Zynga, which overlaps heavily with Scrabble lists but is not identical. Some words valid in WWF are invalid in both Scrabble lists, and the reverse is also true.

Tile values differ too. Selecting Words With Friends switches both the word list and the scoring table, so the points we show match what the game will award.

Wordle, Quordle, Octordle

Wordle distinguishes between two sets: the answer pool, which is smaller and curated, and the much larger set of guesses the game accepts. Our Wordle option filters to five-letter entries and respects that distinction where it is relevant.

Quordle and Octordle use their own variants of the same approach across four and eight simultaneous grids.

How We Build and Check Our Lists

Every entry is normalised to a consistent format, stripped of accents and punctuation, and tagged with the lists it belongs to and its score under each applicable tile table. One word, multiple validity flags — which is how a single search can tell you a word is good in Collins and not in TWL.

Before a list goes live we run three checks: a count against the publisher's stated entry total, a spot check of several hundred known edge cases including recently added and recently removed words, and a scoring verification against a reference set with hand-calculated values.

When a check fails, the list does not ship.

Update Schedule

Publishers do not announce changes on a fixed schedule, so a new edition can land between our reviews. If you spot a discrepancy before we do, tell us — those reports are how most of our corrections start.

Known Limitations

We would rather state these plainly than let you discover them mid-game.

• Dictionaries move. There can be a gap between a publisher's new edition and our update. For sanctioned play, the event's own list governs.
• Proper nouns are excluded. Names of people, places, and brands are not in standard tournament lists and are not in ours, except where a word has entered general usage as a common noun.
• Definitions are not word validity. Where we show a definition it is for context. A word's validity comes from the game list, not from whether a general dictionary defines it.
• English only, for now. Other languages are planned but not shipped.

Copyright and Word Lists

Individual words are facts and belong to nobody. Compiled dictionaries and tournament word lists can be a different matter: the selection and arrangement that go into one may be protected by copyright or database rights in some jurisdictions.

We use these lists to validate and score results. We do not redistribute publishers' files, we do not offer bulk downloads, and our Terms of Service prohibit extracting our dictionary data for republication. Our DMCA Policy explains how rights holders can raise a concern.

Report a Wrong Word

If a word is missing, should not be there, or is scored incorrectly, email [email protected] with the letters you entered, the dictionary you had selected, and the word in question. Those three details let us reproduce almost any report immediately.

We investigate every one. Corrections go out with the next list update, and urgent errors are patched sooner.