Understanding the OSPD

[tahnan]

My brother has introduced me to the Internet Scrabble Club, where I've played a few games with moderate success. (A few rewarding bingoes, like opening with POINTED, or hooking the D in GROINED onto LAZE. Or the game against my brother where I managed RESTORE, with the first two letters played under PA and FAT, and then later, given an M on a triple word score from a previous turn, played MISFILED onto the adjoining triple word.)

But I'm hoping someone on my friends list is a serious enough Scrabble player to explain something to me about the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary.

Why the heck does it contain RETIGHTEN but not *RELOOSEN, the latter of which I had challenged off the board?

Comments

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

I've read it, in fact, but a year or two ago; I couldn't recall what exactly he said about the OSPD.

I know, of course, that there are bound to be annoying gaps in there (why the heck does ROTINI continue to be left out of dictionaries?), but my current concern is trying to figure out which prefixes I can get away with, and which I can't. Or, perhaps: why the heck is PRETRAIN in there but not *RELOOSEN? And the answer, I suppose, is ultimately that I'm going to be left guessing and hoping. Grr.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

This is why the tournament players described in the book spend all their time memorizing which "words" are legal.

It is also why I refuse to play by any reference other than my house Webster's Unabridged. :-)