This page describes which Collins-only words are important for an [[NWL]] player to learn, and is part of our introduction to [[SOWPODS|Collins (SOWPODS) in North America]]. For brevity, we will refer to the North American and International lexica, as NWL and CSW respectively. Our comparison numbers are given for NWL23 and CSW24, but the same ideas apply for the alternative North American lexica WOW24 and NSWL24, which are very similar to NWL for the purposes of this page.

Technically, of courseIn principle, to play CSW from an NWL background you need to learn almost nothingvery little because NWL is close to being a pure subset of CSW. From close to a quarter million words in CSW, because there are just 52 words 130 of length 2-8 letters or fewer that are only good in NWL that are . CSW24 contains 87,984 words not in CSWNWL23, almost all of those which 31,445 are obscure2-8 letters in length, and there 56,539 are none with fewer than 4 9-15 lettersin length.

In practice, there are some useful basic words to start with. Because CSW contains essentially all the NWL wordsand its predecessor, you can continue to play the same gameSOWPODS, and anything that was good in NWL remains good. Because the fundamentals of the game have not changedwere designed this way, with the kinds intent of words that are encompassing both the most useful British and American word lists. NWL used to study in NWL are also the best be even closer to study being a pure subset, but events in CSW. Thus the player who has studied the 2s, 3s, JQXZ words, intervening years have caused some 4s, high probability bingos, etc., can continue to use the same methods for CSWdrift apart.

<!--So how many words are there? In total, the TWL contains 188,738 words, and while in theory you can play CSW contains 276right away,663. About half of these in practice there are 9&ndash;15 letters, and while some 9s can be useful, basic words to study. Because the vast majority (about 98%) fundamentals of the gain is with game do not change between the 2&ndash;8s. OWL contains 88lexica,099 the kinds of these, while CSW has 118,999, which is 30,900 more. This is about 35%, which means that for approximately every 3 TWL words there is an extra CSW word. However, it is likely that you did not start out playing TWL with are the most useful to learn in NWL are also the intention of learning all 188,738 words. Likewise, you can play a good best in CSW game without needing more than a small fraction of the extra 30,900 2&ndash;8s. In fact, you can play a decent game with just Therefore studying the 2s and , 3s. The main thing to keep in mind is that essentially every word you know from TWL is still valid. So, as we have already seen that three quarters of the JQXZ words are TWL, you are already three quarters of the way there. And in many casessome 4s and 5s, even more than thishigh probability bingos, because there will be a choice of movesetc., many of which will continues to be TWL.-->So, what should you actually study? In the following, we present various useful lists and suggestions. In some cases we have presented just the most useful words, but you can see the full list by following the link in the Collins Cheat Sheet section belowproductive approach.

<br>While 20 is not a large number, you probably will not remember them all straightaway. (Your author has played in the World Championships, and did not remember the 2s in one sitting.) They , but they will become a natural part of the game over time. Anecdotally, the ones NWL players have the most difficulty seeing over the board are CH and ST, because C has no 2 letter words in NWL, and ST is an unusual letter combination. FY, KY, and NY are also notable for their combination of lack of vowels and scoring, Z becomes a much more powerful tile with the addition of ZE and ZO, and there are several more 2-vowel 2s: EA, EE, IO, OO, and OU.

Following the 2s, there are 267 3s. The most useful 3s are:

The most useful 3s are:  1-10: QIN IDE EXO IDE OWO ENE ITA OYE JAI ZEA ITA ENE AIA IWIURE 11-20: JOR IWI AIA AYU JOR URE ZEL WEX WOF WOX WOF ZEL ZEX AUA NYEOBO 21-2930: DZO ZEX AME GIO TEX ONY OBO WAI DZO NEF ZOL DOF GIO YEX

<br>Obviously"Usefulness" here is chosen using Zyzzyva's ''playability'' measure, which essentially measures how much you gain by knowing that word. The words with highest playability tend to be high scoring ones that occur often, or letter combinations that are not necessarily high probability but when they do come up they are often significantly better than the next best move. These include words like vowel dumps, and awkward letter combinations such as FV, for example FAUVE in NWLand VIFDA in CSW. Of the CSW-only 3s, the one that comes up by far the most is QIN, you do not need to know 100% of the 3s before continuingChinese musical instrument. While words Other interesting patterns emerge such as ZIZ may come in handy some day?W? being valid with all 5 vowels: AWA, EWE, IWI, OWO, and UWU, but it is likely that various 4s and bingos will come up firstnot in scope here to go into detail.

You do not need to know 100% of the 3s before continuing. The next most useful words after the 2s and 3s are the same as in NWL: short words with many vowels, high-scorers with J, Q, X and Z, some of the most useful 4s and 5s (words which are likely to be much better than other moves if you have those tiles, such as VIFDA), high probability (or playability) bingos, dump-words such as 4s with 2 Is, and words with Q but not the Qu combination.

4s: EUOI HIOI EVOE ONIE IDEE VIAE HUIA VIAE IDEE OUPA UVAE ONIE ALOO EOAN AITU ... 5s: AENEI AIDOI AINEE AULOI BOOAI OUIJA ZOAEA ZOOEA

7s: ETAERIO EATERIE AIERIES OLEARIA EUGARIE DOULEIA EUOUAES DIANOIA MOINEAU AURELIA EUOUAES EQUINIA ... 8s: ETAERIOS ERIONITE AEROTONE NOTITIAE DOUANIER AEGIRITE AEGIRINE DOUANIER NOTITIAE INAURATE AURELIAN AEGIRITE OLEARIAS ETOURDIE ...

JOBE BENJ JUVE JEDI JAGA ROJI ... OUIJA JEWIE JIAOS JEUNE JIRRE JOBED JIGOT ...

QEEMA TALAQ QORMA QUOIF QUOAD QUAIR ... X: EXO WEX WOX ZEX TEX ... WEXE GREX DIXI FAIX DIXI LANX ULEX ... VITEX VIBEX JAXIE XOANA JAXIE WEXED ...

ZOAEA ZOOEA AVIZE ZANTE EZINE SQUIZ ... == Useful 4s and 5s ==  4s: 1-10: EUOI QINS HIOI WEXE EVOE WAQF FIQH JOBE ONIE IDEE 11-20: LAZO VEGO VIAE BENJ HUIA GREX JUVE ALOO TREZ EOAN ... 5s: 1-10: QEEMA TALAQ QORMA YITIE OUIJA AENEI QUOIF QUOAD GUQIN AULOI 11-20: AINEE BOOAI ZOAEA ZOOEA QUAIR AIDOI JEWIE VINEW WAQFS QUINO ...

U: UMU UTUUWU

FIQH -s QALAMDAN QAMEEZ -s es TALAQ -s

MUQADDAM -s QIN QEEMA -s TZADDIQ -s QABALISM -s QINGHAOSU QIN -s TZADDIQIM QABALIST -s QINTARKA QINGHAOSU -s WAQF -s QABALISTIC QORMA QINTARKA YAQONA -s QAIMAQAM -s YAQONA QORMA -s QAIMAQAM QALAMDAN -s QWERTIES

Chosen correctly, it can be shown that learning the top 1% of the words when ordered by playability is equivalent to learning 25% of all the words. So, for the 2-8s, learning the top 300 from CSW is effectively learning one quarter of all the words newly allowed by that lexicon. This top 25% (or any other fraction) can be accessed by playability in the [https://blog.collinsdictionary.com/scrabble/scrabble-tools/ Collins Zyzzyva] word study program.

'''NOTE:''' The Cheat sheet needs updating from CSW21 to CSW24, but is otherwise as described We have incorporated the above into a [[Media:Collins_Cheat_Sheet_CSW21_Part_1_of_2.pdf|Collins Cheat Sheet]], that is designed to be used as a reference by players of CSW who started off using NWL [1], in settings that allow it.

[1] In fact, the sheet can The sheets could also be used by native CSW players who wish to play NWL to know which words are *not* allowed, although it is not complete in this sense.