Counting down to CSW24
The year 2024 is coming to a close next month, and starting on Jan. 1, 2025, the new update to the Collins Scrabble Words (CSW) lexicon will come alive. If you haven't started learning the 1,816 new words that will grace the Collins lexicon in less than six weeks, you're in for a treat. Let's talk about some of the fun additions and the resources we've compiled to help you learn them all.
This new lexicon update to the Collins Scrabble dictionary brings the first addition of words in five years. The world and how we talk about it have changed a lot since then. With CSW being the international dictionary, it's not a surprise to see new words like the Korean HANBOK and DALGONA. As a gamer, I'm relieved to see NERF added. As a very poor tosser of beanbags, I am amused to see CORNHOLE join the list. I won a bet about whether NIBLING would get added within the next decade, so that feels pretty awesome.
ZONKEY joins the ranks of WHOLPHIN and other hybrid animals. I was once asked by a stranger what fun words I'd learned through Scrabble play. I thought WHOLPHIN was a wacky word that he wouldn't know. I was wrong. Turns out, that person spent his university days studying wholphins in Hawaii. Wholphins are extremely rare. Wholphin scientists are even rarer!
Many of us have random stories like this one associated with memorable plays or fun words. These stories become part of what brings us joy through Scrabble. That's why I'm glad to be learning new words and - gasp! - their definitions as well.
There are many tools out there to help you learn the Scrabble dictionary. You will find tons of these resources on our Learning Tools page. The best place to start is the WESPA Initiation Kit. For the hordes of players who use Zyzzyva, Collins Zyzzyva 24.0 is now available with downloads for both the Mac and Windows versions.
My personal favorite study app is Anki. Anki has a free desktop version and a rather pricey app that syncs seamlessly with the desktop so you can study words on both your computer or phone from a single synchronized cardbox. I prefer Anki over Zyzzyva because I can study on the go using my phone and because Anki provides more flexibility in customizing the scheduling of cardboxes.
Let me give you an example. Let's say I anagram AEEIORT correctly nine times in a row. On the 10th try, I fail to find the berry in the rack. In Zyzzyva, getting that anagram wrong would return it to cardbox zero. This does not make sense to me. It's more likely that I know the anagram pretty well, and had a momentary lapse that doesn't merit returning the word all the way back to cardbox zero. Zyzzyva would schedule it to show up at the same time interval as a word that I got wrong 10 times in a row.
I find Anki's method more logical. It will penalize me for getting the word wrong, but it will schedule it to show up again in my cardbox in a time interval that takes my past performance with the rack into account.
Another aspect of Anki that I enjoy is being able to maintain several active cardboxes simultaneously. I have one cardbox for bingos, and several separate cardboxes for shorter words. If I really want to focus on bingos, I can drill the bingo cardbox. If I want to strengthen my grasp of power fives, I can open that cardbox instead. (My favorite word list to study contains the double-K sixes. Pretty useless, but so much fun. How else would I come across KOKAKO?)
Which study tool or method works for each person will depend on your own learning style. There are tons of great programs out there, including Xerafin and Karatasi. Good old-fashioned handwriting of word lists is solid, too. I still need to update my printed lists of bingos to include the new anagrams so I can write these out (and learn their definitions) when I have time.
If you want a quick overview of the new short words, we have updated versions of the CoCo CSW24 cheat sheet available, thanks to the automated genius of CoCo volunteer Tony Boyle. The international version of our cheat sheet highlights the CSW24 words so you know what's been added since CSW21. Our comparison cheat sheet shows all differences between CSW24 and two North American lexicons, making it easier than ever to try the Collins dictionary for the first time.
Bottom line, if you want to learn the new Collins words in time for New Year's Day, now is the time. Check out our lexicon page for a link to download Collins Zyzzyva 24.0, instructions on how to install the new lexicon in Ulu, the updated word list file for LeXpert, and more.