--- /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