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There are some individually maintained lists for some Scrabble dictionaries, and some websites for looking up words in those dictionaries:

However, collecting these and trying to make sense of the varying forms of data is difficult. OSPD, the only official dictionary, is copyrighted (see comments) so there is not likely a reasonable or legal source for this information.

Are there databases or APIs which allow querying of word lists from SOWPODS or TWL/OWL? Better yet, is there a unified source which allows querying specific dictionaries (or all dictionaries) based on a parameter?

English is the primary language of interest, but APIs providing other languages would be helpful as well.

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    One interesting aspect would be the licenses under which these datasets are released. The first two seem to be open data, although there is no explicit license statement. The third one has a copyright statement, however it is not clear what database it accesses and if / how it is licensed. Do you have any additional information on this?
    – Patrick Hoefler
    Commented May 12, 2013 at 17:16
  • I can't answer directly -- but I know that Wordnik pulled that data from somewhere so they could tell you if it was a valid Scrable work or not ... I bet Erin would tell you if you asked her.
    – Joe
    Commented May 12, 2013 at 17:17
  • @PatrickHoefler I know for a fact that SOWPODS and TWL are not officially recognized, and thus are not copyrighted. OSPD is actually copyrighted (Hasbro v RJ Software, section 24C), so I'll adjust my question accordingly.
    – Cat
    Commented May 12, 2013 at 17:37
  • I don't understand how you get from "not officially recognized" to "not copyrighted". Surely the creator of the list may copyright the list without any recognition necessary.
    – Kef Schecter
    Commented Aug 28, 2019 at 14:59

5 Answers 5

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The Wordnik API will tell you whether any single word is a valid scrabble word (among other information).

http://developer.wordnik.com/docs.html#!/word/getWord_get_1

I am not sure that's exactly what you're looking for, but it's the best I've got.

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  • You're right that this is not exactly what I'd hoped for, but I've upvoted it anyway as this is a very helpful resource to anyone using Scrabble dictionaries (and may well be the best resource available).
    – Cat
    Commented May 12, 2013 at 17:40
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You can find an API here as well:

Free Scrabble Dictionary API

updated link

The current function of the scrabble dictionary API is to inform you whether the word you are looking up is located in any of the official scrabble word lists (TWL also referred to as Official Tournament and Club Word List, SOWPODS and ENABLE).

Our API is free for anyone to use as long as it is for non-commercial use only and will not exceed more than 100 calls per 24 hours.

If you are going to use our API we require you to cite it as your source.

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I found another source, halfway hidden, with roughly 180k English words

http://scrabutility.com/TWL06.txt (archived link)

and based on:

Tournament Word List (TWL06)

TWL - the American dictionary, based on the Official Scrabble Players' Dictionary , used in North American and Canadian tournaments.

which links this site: https://www.isc.ro/en/commands/lists.html (that link includes some other languages and lists)

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Another wordlist, Collins Scrabble Words, CSW15, is available as a txt file:

http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~o-laughl/csw15.txt

archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20200109155307/http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~o-laughl/csw15.txt

(tweet source/discussion)

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This Scrabble dictionary shows you the validity of a word in real-time as you plug it in. I also like this site b/c they have 2 million words (and counting) in their database and let you vote and collaborate on their resources. Cheers :)

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