Collins Scrabble Words

Collins Scrabble Words (CSW, formerly SOWPODS) is the word list used in English-language tournament Scrabble in most countries except the US, Thailand and Canada.^[1] The term SOWPODS is an anagram of the two abbreviations OSPD (Official Scrabble Players Dictionary) and OSW (Official Scrabble Words), these being the original two official dictionaries used in various parts of the world at the time. Although the two source dictionaries have now changed their respective titles, the term SOWPODS is still used by tournament players to refer to the combination of the two sources. There has not been any actual hard-copy list produced called SOWPODS, although the current Collins Scrabble Words, or CSW, is in effect the full SOWPODS list by a different name.

Currently the two main sources for the words making up the combined list (generally known as Collins) are:

• The British words. Derived from two sources; the Collins English Dictionary and the Collins Corpus,^[2] and
• The American words. From the NASPA Word List, formerly Official Tournament and Club Word List, or TWL, derived from the Merriam-Webster's Dictionary and four other collegiate dictionaries. Latest version is NWL2023.