WHY ARE THESE WORD LISTS DIFFERENT FROM OTHER LISTS?

Alan Beale painstakingly compiled the word lists in this package based on
the appearance of words in standard dictionaries. This would appear to be
similar to the work of Official Word List Committee (the one affiliated
with a certain anagramming board game players association and a certain
large toy corporation). The difference is that Alan documented his work,
and the documentation is here for all to see. His lucid documentation is,
in many ways, more interesting than the word lists themselves.

Anagramming can be a addictive activity. Yet, what brings it truly alive
is a passion for language, for the words themselves, for their meaning and
derivation, for their essence. As a purely mechanical exercise in letter
permutation, anagramming reduces to a dry-as-dust intellectual exercise,
and one in which brute-force computer algorithms are superior to even
the most talented humans. This is why it's so important to dig beneath
the superficial letter patterns, and why a printed unannotated list
(even with "official" imprimatur) is, at best, a tool with a dull edge.

Hence, these lists.



Mendel Cooper