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The National SCRABBLE® Association's Dictionary Committee was formed in September 1996 with a mandate to develop and maintain the lexicon used at sanctioned clubs and tournaments.
Contact information for current members of the NSADC can be found at the NSA Boards and Committees page.
The next project of the committee will be to update the Long List.
The first edition of the Official Club and Tournament Word List, edited by the NSADC under the chairmanship of John Chew, replaced the Official SCRABBLE® Players Dictionary on March 2nd, 1998 as the official lexicon for club and tournament play in Canada and the United States. The OTCWL is available for sale through the WORD GEAR catalog. ERRATUM: the acceptable word ANTEFIXAE was incorrectly omitted from the printed edition.
In early 2003, the NSADC finished putting together the first edition of the Official Long Words List. Only available to current NSA members, it has no definitions listed and is the word source for NSA clubs and tournaments for words longer than 9 letters.
In early 2005, the NSADC completed editing the fourth edition of the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary. This marked the first time since the first edition when words were included from multiple sources: the American Heritage College Dictionary (4th edition), Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th edition), Random House Webster’s College Dictionary (2nd revised and updated edition, 2000) and Webster's New World College Dictionary (4th edition). A list of new 2- and 3-letter words and a complete list of changes are available at this web site.
In late 2005, the NSADC's used the OSPD3–OSPD4 changes to update the Official Club and Tournament Word List. OWL2 was published in 2006 and became the official word source for NSA clubs and tournaments as of March 1, 2006. The tournament word list is not available to the public in electronic form; it can be purchased in print from NSA Word Gear, Inc..