1 WHY ARE THESE WORD LISTS DIFFERENT FROM OTHER LISTS?
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3 Alan Beale painstakingly compiled the word lists in this package based on
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4 the appearance of words in standard dictionaries. This would appear to be
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5 similar to the work of Official Word List Committee (the one affiliated
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6 with a certain anagramming board game players association and a certain
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7 large toy corporation). The difference is that Alan documented his work,
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8 and the documentation is here for all to see. His lucid documentation is,
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9 in many ways, more interesting than the word lists themselves.
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11 Anagramming can be a addictive activity. Yet, what brings it truly alive
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12 is a passion for language, for the words themselves, for their meaning and
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13 derivation, for their essence. As a purely mechanical exercise in letter
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14 permutation, anagramming reduces to a dry-as-dust intellectual exercise,
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15 and one in which brute-force computer algorithms are superior to even
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16 the most talented humans. This is why it's so important to dig beneath
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17 the superficial letter patterns, and why a printed unannotated list
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18 (even with "official" imprimatur) is, at best, a tool with a dull edge.
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