                              
                                 ENABLE
                              


The Enhanced North American Benchmark LExicon (ENABLE) is the most carefully 
researched, and therefore the most authoritative word list and reference 
available for Scrabble (tm) players. The word list file itself retains the 
name WORD.LST, to retain compatibility with the WORDY utilities written for 
it. The word list is in plain ASCII format, unencrypted, and is placed in 
the Public Domain for anyone to use as they see fit. It is non-proprietary, 
free, and freely available for any legal use, and therefore it can truly 
function as standard and a benchmark for the Scrabble (tm) community. 


The master word list in ENABLE, WORD.LST, is *not* the so-called TWL98, a 
proprietary word list prepared by an "official" dictionary committee, 
rather, it is an even more accurate and authoritative reference for the 
competitive and tournament Scrabble (tm) player. It has been updated to 
reflect the changes that will go into place as of January 1, 1998, so many 
"old friends", such as "vin" and "da" have now disappeared. The original 
WORD.LST contained 100,701 words, this enhanced version has over 172,000. 
This word list would not have been possible without the help of a number of 
people in the Scrabble (tm) community, most notably Alan Beale for his 
tireless research, and to them go my thanks. 

Ample documentation for the claims of accuracy and authoritativeness of the 
ENABLE list is contained in the SUPP10.ZIP archive, particularly in the file 
DOOM_ENA.DOC. This file contains a detailed listing of the differences 
between the ENABLE list and the DOOM/TWL98 list, including sources and 
justifications for the additions and corrections. 

The master word list, WORD.LST, contains all 70 of the MW10 "also called" 
words. These are the italicized entries in the MW10 hidden in definitions of 
other words with the notation "also called". An example of this is found in 
the entry for "streelight", wherein is the notation "also called
streetlamp". Therefore, the word "streetlamp" belongs in the ENABLE 
WORD.LST. A complete list of these "also called" words, with appropriate 
cross-references, may be found in the ALSO.LST file in the SUPP10.ZIP 
archive. Note that the DOOM/TWL98 list opened this particular "can of worms" 
with the adoption of the word "starfruit", found in the definition of 
"carambola". Nevertheless, the DOOM/TWL98 list still includes only about 
half of these words. 

In contrast to other word lists, the ENABLE list has not been crippled by 
being limited to words under an arbitrary length. The ENABLE list is 
eminently suitable for most word games, such as Anagrams and Clabbers, and 
for crossword puzzle solving, rather than just for Scrabble (tm). A great 
deal of research has gone into removing this limitation, however the list is 
much the better for it. 

The file SIGWORD.LST is a list of the 500 words longer than 8 letters in 
WORD.LST that do not appear in the MW10, but *do* appear in other standard 
sources. These "signature words" distinguish this list from others. Of 
course, those wishing to may delete the SIGWORD.LST words from the WORD.LST 
in order to obtain a more "standardized" listing. This may be accomplished 
simply and quickly using the UNIX "comm" utility in the following manner: 

             comm -23 word.lst sigword.list > word.lst.new.

This will create the file "word.lst.new" with the signature words deleted. 
All you DOS and Windows (tm) users may, if you wish, edit the WORD.LST file 
manually to remove the SIGWORD.LST words (this should not take more than a 
few hours). It would also be fairly simple to write a utility to 
automatically accomplish this in any of the commonly used programming 
languages such as C, C++, Perl, sed, awk, or even, heaven forbid, VB. This 
is left as an exercise for the reader. 




The ENABLE master word list, WORD.LST, is herewith formally released into 
the Public Domain. Anyone is free to use it or distribute it in any manner 
they see fit. No fee or registration is required for its use nor are 
"contributions" solicited (if you feel you absolutely must contribute 
something for your own peace of mind, the authors of the ENABLE list ask 
that you make a donation on their behalf to your favorite charity). This 
word list is our gift to the Scrabble (tm) community, as an alternate to 
"official" word lists. Game designers may feel free to incorporate the 
WORD.LST into their games. Please mention the source and credit us as 
originators of the list. Note that if you, as a game designer, use the 
WORD.LST in your product, you may still copyright and protect your product, 
but you may *not* legally copyright or in any way restrict redistribution of 
the WORD.LST portion of your product. This *may* under law restrict your 
rights to restrict your users' rights, but that is only fair. 

The accuracy of the WORD.LST is due, in great part, to the herculean efforts 
of Alan Beale. He has put in many hours of multi-dictionary research in 
checking conjugations, inflections, and obscure parts of speech of thousands 
of words. In every sense of the word, he is as much the father of the word 
list as anyone. 

Ross Beresford (ross@bryson.demon.co.uk)  has  incorporated  the    WORD.LST
from WORDY into    his  North  American  Scrabble      (tm)  version  of his
excellent TEA word  list  generation  / analysis program. See his home page,
http://www.bryson.demon.co.uk/,  for word list info and more details of TEA.



WORD.LST (pronounced "word-dot-list")  is   now  the generic  term  for  the
ASCII-format word file released into the Public Domain  as a standard and  a
reference for crossword-type games.  As laptop and  palmtop computers become
more common and   affordable, it will be convenient to  use the  WORD.LST in
conjunction with utilities such as SEARCH.EXE (part of the WORDY package) to
adjudicate disputes in word  game competitive   play. The OSPD  (tm)  in its
various versions and incarnations is  not particularly well  suited for this
application as it is poorly organized, sometimes difficult to interpret, and
clumsy to use  (try   locating   the word PELVES  in the printed  OSPD,  for
example). Furthermore, the WORD.LST  is   free   from   corporate  politics,
scheming and conniving,    committee     wrangling,   "politically  correct"
appeasement, compromising, greed  motive, and all other such ***nonsense***.
The WORD.LST is yours, word game  players! Use it.  Help keep it updated and
corrected. Distribute it (you do *not* need permission to do so, but tell us
about it)!







Scrabble and OSPD are trademarks owned by Milton Bradley, a division of
Hasbro.

Windows is a trademark of the Microsoft Corporation.


WORDY is *not*  copyrighted and is  *not* a trademark. It may be found under
'W' in any dictionary, just as scrabble,  the verb,  may be found under 'S'.
The make-believe word "hasbro" may be  whimsically defined as  "possessing a
male sibling" (named Milton, I guess).

ENABLE is not a trademark. WORD.LST is not a trademark.

   This whole trademark business has been taken to ridiculous extremes.




I would like to express my gratitude to Linus Thorvalds for making possible 
Linux, a UNIX operating system, without which all the work on the ENABLE 
list would scarcely have been possible. Linux, like other flavors of UNIX, 
contains, as "standard equipment", wonderful built-in text and list 
processing commands and utilities such as comm, diff, uniq, sed, awk, Perl, 
vi, and emacs. On a previous incarnation of WORD.LST, the best DOS sort 
program I could find (a shareware utility, as the DOS sort command choked on 
files longer than 64K) took a full 45 minutes to sort a 1 megabyte word 
list. This time around, the Linux sort command sorted the full 1.7 megabyte 
WORD.LST in about *10 seconds*. I am convinced that any serious word list 
processing requires a UNIX-like operating system and at at least a 
rudimentary grasp of programming. 

Linux is *not* a trademark  (this was the subject of a recent court battle). 



Disclaimer: Neither I nor Alan Beale is in any way associated with the 
so-called "Official Dictionary Committee", nor with the NSA in any of its 
guises or avatars (i.e., neither the National Scrabble (tm) Association nor 
the National Security Agency). We did not and do not have access to the 
so-called TWL98, and the ENABLE list is not derivative from it. We do 
believe, however, the the ENABLE list is more thoroughly researched, more 
accurate, and therefore a more authoritative and generally useful 
replacement for the TWL98 list. 




                                 M\Cooper
                                PO Box 237
                        St. David, AZ 85630-0237
              -------------------------------------------
                         thegrendel@theriver.com
              http://personal.riverusers.com/~thegrendel/
