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First off, if you don't have a Scrabble dictionary and play Scrabble, you NEED TO buy this book. But let's say that you're like me and you have an older edition. Well the older editions had separate sections that listed all those nifty two letter words that can rack up big points (ex: aa, ae, xi, em, jo, etc). But you can find all of those words in the new one, just not listed separately. However, if you're like me and want to use all the new-fangled words like zit then you won't find them in any edition but the new one. I'm sure that there are many other new words in this edition, zit is just the only one that I've noticed so far. It's a trade-off, yoúr choice: the convenience of common-word lists in the older editions or the proff that newer words exist in the new version. I have both; maybe that's your best bet.

"The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary" (2nd edition) is a dictionary created especially for players of the classic Scrabble board game. Thus, each entry is stripped down to its bare essentials: the word, what part of speech it is, a very brief definition, and some inflected forms. If you're looking for extensive descriptions of word origins, look elsewhere.

The introduction notes that the dictionary includes "obsolete, archaic, slang, [and] nonstandard words." This includes a lot of words that would be considered obscene. There are plenty of ethnic slurs, as well as colorful words for private body parts and intimate biological functions--the "f-word" and its various derivations, for example, are included. So if you're sensitive about such matters, be warned!

Words greater than 8 letters long are not included (unless they are inflected forms of a main entry). Thus, for actual Scrabble play this book should be supplemented by a more general dictionary. Proper names, hyphenated words, and other words not acceptable in Scrabble are not included.

All that being said, this is an enormously entertaining dictionary. Words from "aa" ("rough cindery lava") to "zyzzyva" ("a tropical weevil") are included. Acceptable variant spellings of some words are also included; for example, we find out that "koumis," "koumys," "koumyss," "kumiss," and "kumys" are all acceptable spellings of "koumiss" ("a beverage made from camel's milk").

Other fun words included in this dictionary: "ajowan" ("the fruit of an Egyptian plant"), "britska" ("an open carriage"), "eeliest" ("superlative of eely"), "firepink" ("a flowering plant"), "maumetry" ("idolatry"), "peetweet" ("a wading bird"), "quokka" ("a short-tailed wallaby"), and "schmelze" ("a type of decorative glass"). Overall an indispensable resource for serious Scrabble players, and just a fun book for anyone else who loves offbeat words.

If you play scrabble around the home, this is a fun, helpful book to have around.

The National Scrabble Association web page on May 2004, has a tournament rules list that is dated May 2002. In these tournament rules, the reference section is as follows:

a) Official Tournament & Club Word List

Official Tournament & Club Word List (OWL) contains the only 2- to 9-letter words acceptable for club and tournament play, published by Merriam-Webster, Inc.

b) Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th Edition (MW10)
For words of more than nine letters, the OWL is consulted first. If a longer word (more than nine letters) is not listed in the OWL, to be judged acceptable it must appear as a main entry or inflected form or alternate spelling in bold print in (MW10). It must not be capitalized, hyphenated, contracted, foreign or listed only as part of a multi-word phrase.

Words of fewer than 10 letters listed in MW10 but not in the OWL are not acceptable, nor are inflections of main entries of fewer than 10 letters. Any word used in the definition of another word but not listed itself is not acceptable.