The new CSW24 lexicon is here!

For the most part, Scrabble is a game that's gone pretty much unchanged over the years. From the rules that Alfred Butts drew up way back in the 1930s, to the rules they've always printed inside the little cardboard box, to the rules we all play with in tournaments today, it's been pretty much the same game all along. It's been passed down through the generations like that.

So when we do get a teensy weensy little update to the game we all know and love, in the form of a few extra words added to our dictionary, it's a pretty gosh-darned exciting bit of news.

And that's the news we all received earlier this month. The World English Scrabble Players Association (WESPA), via their chair Chris Lipe, announced in September that they're updating the Collins lexicon to include 1,816 new words. These words will be valid in tournament play starting Jan. 1.

The new words include 12 new threes, 43 fours, 103 fives, 183 sixes, 252 sevens, 254 eights, 290 nines, and 679 words of length 10 or longer. And, when you take a few minutes to sift through them, one thing very quickly becomes clear - they're all really, really fun.

We now get to play all sorts of modern slang terms like FAM+ and BRUH+ and YEET+ and IMMA+ and FINNA+ and WELP+. We have tasty foods like QUESO+ and GUAC+ and PARM+ and BULGOGI+ and CARNITAS+ and OMAKASE+. We get fun expressions like AMIRITE+ and slangy insults like JAMOKE+. We have NERF+. We have PANTS - as a verb! We have hilarious swear words like... you know what, never mind, just go look for yourself.

All in all, we're only looking at a small uptick in the size of the CSW lexicon. We had just north of 279,000 words at our disposal prior to this update, so the new words only bring us to about 0.65 percent more. But that small difference can make a big difference, if that makes any sense. Every game of Scrabble you play will be a little bit different now. Every turn, there's the potential for one new word to alter the course of play. Dare I say, the update gives our game a much-appreciated ZHUZHING+.

You can expect to see more CSW24 bells and whistles unveiled over the course of the fall. An updated version of Collins Zyzzyva is coming soon; likewise, mobile apps like Ulu will have the new words before long.

As for actual CSW24 play getting underway, people are welcome to begin using the new words at the local club level whenever they're ready. For tournaments, the CoCo board has voted to wait until the start of 2025 to officially usher in the new lexicon. So, as of right now, the first CoCo tournament to use the new words will be the Crescent City Cup in January.

In other words, you've got plenty of time to start learning. But don’t procrastinate - get to work! You can head over to our Lexicon page when you're ready to crack open the new words and start studying. We've got links there to two documents - one is the WESPA Initiation Kit, which presents the most important words for Scrabble play sorted by length, and the other is the Complete Set of New Words, which, as the name would imply, is the complete set of all the new words.

Learn at your leisure. And have fun with it! These words are HELLA+ awesome, FOLX+.