+++ /dev/null
-The ABLE (Alternate British LExicon) list purports to represent the\r
-contents of the fourth edition of OSW, plus longer words from the 1997\r
-Chambers Dictionary. The notorious OSW is itself based on the Chambers\r
-Dictionary, which is the official reference for Scrabble players in\r
-Britain. We have removed words duplicated in the ENABLE list to reduce\r
-the size of the archive.\r
-\r
-Due to copyright considerations, the maintainers of ENABLE could\r
-not reproduce the "official" OSW. Under highly obscure circumstances,\r
-however, we came into possession of an equivalent list. It seems that a\r
-mysterious individual, identifying himself only as "The Third Man" (with\r
-more than a slight resemblance to the young Orson Wells), handed over a\r
-sealed diplomatic pouch on a dark and stormy night to a cashiered ex-MI6\r
-operative. There were strains of zither music in the background, and the\r
-whole sordid affair had a tinge of disreputable sleaziness. Somehow, a\r
-bundle of papers from the pouch found its way into a dumpster behind the\r
-Pentagon, from whence it was retrieved by an inebriated denizen of the\r
-nearby Men's Shelter. There the tangled trail of this latter day version\r
-of the Pentagon Papers vanished until... Years later, one of the ENABLE\r
-maintainers purchased a battered, but otherwise undistinguished statuette\r
-of a black falcon from the venerable auction firm of Spade & Archer. The\r
-base of the statuette, next to the "Made in Malta" inscription, seemed\r
-to contain a hollow space. Within it was a sheaf of yellowing mildewy\r
-papers. It was a handwritten word list, the last surviving facsimile of\r
-the ABLE list! ...And the rest, as they say, is history.\r
-\r
-For this revision of the ENABLE2K Supplement, the ABLE list has been\r
-improved in the following ways. It has incorporated changes from the\r
-fourth edition of OSW. A significant number of errors have been\r
-corrected. And finally, two more controversial changes have been\r
-made. First, OSW contains a small number of words which are not valid\r
-Scrabble plays according to American rules. These include foreign\r
-words (bitte), words with no part of speech (winna) and words\r
-containing capital letters (pH). These words have been removed from\r
-the ABLE list. Additionally, in the process of revising ABLE, we\r
-discovered a number of cases where we believe the compilers of OSW\r
-have misinterpreted Chambers. There are both words whose inclusion\r
-is not justified (chilioi, which appears only in an etymology) and\r
-words which should have been included but were not (coinop). We\r
-have corrected both sorts of errors, and regard these changes as\r
-"signature words" for ABLE. (Perhaps a better term would be "signature\r
-corrections", as some words were removed rather than added.)\r
-\r
-Further information on Alan Beale's researches on ABLE, including the\r
-complete ABLE list without removal of words duplicated in ENABLE, is\r
-available as an additional supplement to ENABLE2K. This supplement\r
-also contains full lists of the invalid Scrabble words and the\r
-"signature corrections".\r
-\r
-\r
-By combining the "ABLE.LST" file from this archive with "WORD.LST"\r
-from ENABLE2K, interested parties can create a workable version of the\r
-"SOWPODS" list beloved of tournament word gamers. This may be accomplished\r
-either using Alan Beale's "makelist" utility or by a simple UNIX pipe\r
-(cat WORD.LST ABLE.LST | sort | uniq > SOWPODS.LST).\r
projects / deb_pkgs / scowl.git / blobdiff