From: "Thomas, Graeme" <thogr04@mail.cai.com>
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 1997 09:00:15 -0400
Subject: RE: SOWPODS as a METAPHOR
Message-id: <9709261259.AA29936@cai.com>
Dan Pratt wrote:
Not at all, but I did once note that someone else collected 222 Twos from various dictionaries and published them;At least I can still remember the days when I had a working memory.
It seems everyone agrees that OSW has a lot more of the words that a reasonably well-read person wouldn't know than OSPD.This is implicit in the derivation of the two lists. OSPD is the amalgamation of 5 collegiate dictionaries (or at least it started that way), and so one would expect its vocabulary to remain essentially "collegiate". OSW comes from Chambers, which is much nearer an unabridged dictionary. One would expect, therefore, OSW to have more oddities (i.e. words that a reasonably well-read person wouldn't know).
I would define myself as a reasonably well-read person. Most of my reading, though, has been of English (or Scottish) books, which means that I find most of the OSPD-only words to be very odd indeed, whereas many of the OSW-only words have a familiar air to them.
But the real question is how a reasonable person regards the unfamiliar words. As I've noted on several occasions, most wordgame enthusiasts are delighted to learn new words, so long as they are correctly spelled, etc.Agreed. I'd add, though, that a great many newcomers react with horror at the realization that their vocabularies are woefully inadequate, even at the level of (say) the words common to both OSPD and OSW.
A lot of the SOWPODS words unique to OSW and some of the ones unique to OSPD just don't meet that criterion; they delight no one as words, to the great detriment of the game, even if they do please a tiny percentage of the world's wordgame lovers as "game pieces".Here's where I disagree. There's no doubt that some words don't meet the criteria, although I have a horrible suspicion that there are very few such words on which we'd all agree. ("Want 3 opinions? Just ask any two Scrabble players.")
Let me try an example. A couple of weeks ago I played DRAD#, and later hooked a Y on it, for YDRAD#. My opponent, a fairly new player[1], was so delighted with the words that when she went home she immediately started to tell her husband about them. And yet, since DRAD# is Spenserian and YDRAD# is obsolete, I suspect that they would appear on many players' lists of non-words.
The NSA's dictionary committee has tried to remove some of the crud from TWL96, to form TWL97. One of the casualties has been DA, previously only defined in OSPD as a particle in names (such as Leonardo da Vinci). Chambers defines the word twice: once as a dialect word for "father", and once as a Burmese knife. MW3NI also has two meanings: "father", and as KENAF[2]. I have seen both the "father" and "knife" meanings in print. The tidying process has removed all of these, as MWCD10 doesn't have the word in at all. Is this removing words which "please a tiny percentage of the world's wordgame lovers as game pieces", or removing fairly common words which have a right to stay there?
I fully acknowledge that neither OSPD nor OSW is a perfect word list. However, any attempt to tidy them up (beyond a very minor cosmetic change) is likely to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Graeme
[1] OK, so I was losing, and hence desperate.
[2] KENAF is an Indian plant, Hibiscus cannabis.