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From: poslfit@gmail.com (John J. Chew III)
Date: Wed, 1 Oct 1997 15:22:46 -0400
Subject: SOWPODS
Message-id: <199710011922.PAA26468@coxeter.math.toronto.edu>

For the archive (see http://www.math.utoronto.ca/~jjchew/cgp ):

I personally believe that we in Canada and the United States should start using SOWPODS for tournament play as soon as possible. If it is more palatable to some to pass through an intermediate lexicon, such as the Minipods lexicon used at the last Canadian WSC qualifying tournament, I am not opposed to that process.

Given that the WSC is a SOWPODS tournament, I see no good reason to continue to handicap Canadian and American representatives by making them play most of their games with a different lexicon. Granted, for players who aren't likely to compete at small invitational international competitions, it's a lot to ask of them to have them learn a large number of culturally foreign words. I don't really see that we have a choice in the matter - I don't want to see a situation where top players remove themselves from the regular tournament circuit to avoid dictionary confusion, and I think this already happens to a certain extent, especially in the buildup to each WSC.

I find arguments about the alienness of words to be something between parochial and xenophobic. Nobody knows all the words in the dictionary, let alone considers them to be in some sense 'ordinary'. If everyone were allowed to exclude words from play because they thought they were unusual, then no two players would have the same lexicon. We can either agree to use only those words that everyone thinks are common (in which case we'll be reduced to a few thousand words of Basic English, and everyone will have to remember which of their own common words are unacceptable), or we can try to use all the words that are considered common by some reasonably large population somewhere in the world.

I'm not sure I would have chosen Chambers as a British word source myself, but then I'm not British. It does have a lot of words that seem weird to me, but given its status as the official lexicon of newspaper crosswords and word games in general, and given the lack of a suitable alternative, I have no serious complaints. We in OSPD territory are also in no position to be pointing fingers.

As for the possibility of removing some of the stranger words from both lexica, I think that has to be an ongoing process, and should be left in the hands of the NSA's Dictionary Committee and Chambers' editorial staff. Linking the two issues of dictionary unification and dictionary cleansing looks like a suspiciously obstructionist tactic to both processes, as there's no reason why they can't proceed independently.

Finally, though some days I feel as though I'm in the minority, I genuinely enjoy learning new words - it's a big part of the enjoyment of the game of Scrabble for me. What I probably like least about Scrabble[1] is seeing plays that I can't make because the words that they involve aren't in the lexicon I'm using, something that has been happening with increasing frequency with my study of OSW.

John Chew (poslfit on MD/WD/PD)
Chairman, NSA Dictionary Committee (but not writing ex cathedra)
poslfit@gmail.com * http://www.math.utoronto.ca/~jjchew

[1] It's either that or having to wade through endless, tedious, repetitive postings about the same, tired, old topics.