For many, playing Scrabble is a favorite pastime, and many benefit from having aides like a dictionary on hand to defend their words. Not being a great Scrabble player, I decided that I can improve my game tremendously by learning more about the game. I bought two books: Everything Scrabble, which I'm still reading, and the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary Fourth Edition.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary has more than 100,000 2-8 letter words. Just thumbing through the dictionary, I am finding several words that I would never have thought would be accepted or are actually considered words. Here are a few examples:

Aargh - used to express disgust, Aarrgh - adjective of Aargh, Aarrghh - adjective of Aargh
Zzz - used to suggest the sound of snoring
QWERTY - a standard keyboard
Veg - to spend time idly

It might be wise to keep the Scrabble dictionary close to the game to defend word challenges that are sure to come.

The Scrabble dictionary Fourth edition includes 4,000 new entries that are acceptable under the rules of Scrabble. This edition also includes alternative spellings of words like color(colour) and center(centre) for game players in Canada. Most entries include a brief definition. There are lists of words that self-explanatory words listed under U, for example, unleashed. Along with the definition, each word has a part-of-speech label as well as any inflected forms of the word for easy reference.

Playing the board game Scrabble can be a lot of fun but can also be quite challenging to work with the letters that you are given. The Scrabble dictionary makes it easy to thumb through and gain knowledge of Scrabble-legal words. It might help to improve your Scrabble game and expand your vocabulary at the same time.