Just a heads-up that the official tournament word list transition to TWL2014 is coming soon. There will be a NASPA Advisory Board conference call later this week, where the official date is likely to be decided on. Barring any last-minute surprises from Hasbro or Merriam-Webster (which I think is unlikely, but, given their recent history, I would not completely rule out) regarding their acceptance of Zyzzyva's implementation of the electronic version of the new list, I would expect the official rollout date to fall sometime in April. This means that tournaments after that date will use TWL2014 as the official lexicon, and words like PO, TE, and BACKWOODSIEST will suddenly become acceptable for the first time.
What does this mean for our club? Well, I'll wait for the official NASPA announcement before throwing out a date for our club to change over to the new list, but practically speaking, I'd like folks to have a week or two to begin familiarizing themselves with the new words (if you haven't started already) before we start using it at club.
Where do you go to get the new words? There are two good resources currently available. The first is the official hard-copy TWL2014 word list available at the NASPA online store, here: http://www.scrabbleplayers.org/cgi-bin/shop.pl
The second resource is the Seattle Scrabble Club's website, which has a very nice list of the new 2-4 letter words, plus an ever-growing (updated) list of the longer words: http://www.seattlescrabble.org/owl3.php
Thirdly, an electronic list will be available to NASPA members via a licensed copy of Zyzzyva, pending the Hasbro/M-W approval mentioned above. The expectation is that an announcement of Zyzzyva availability with the new word list is coming soon. I'll pass along more details on this as soon as they're available.
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