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This page describes which Collins-only words are important for an NWL player to learn, and is part of our introduction to 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.
In principle, to play CSW from an NWL background you need to learn very little because NWL is close to being a pure subset of CSW. From close to a quarter million words in CSW, there are just 130 of length 2-8 letters that are only good in NWL. CSW24 contains 87,984 words not in NWL23, of which 31,445 are 2-8 letters in length, and 56,539 are 9-15 letters in length.
CSW and its predecessor, SOWPODS, were designed this way, with the intent of encompassing both the British and American word lists. NWL used to be even closer to being a pure subset, but events in the intervening years have caused some drift apart.
So while in theory you can play CSW right away, in practice there are some useful basic words to study. Because the fundamentals of the game do not change between the lexica, the kinds of words that are the most useful to learn in NWL are also the best in CSW. Therefore studying the 2s, 3s, JQXZ words, some 4s and 5s, high probability bingos, etc., continues to be the most productive approach.
As in NWL, by far the most useful words are the 2s. There are 20 more of these in CSW:
1-10: CH DI EA EE FY GU IO JA KO KY 11-20: NY OB OO OU ST UG UR YU ZE ZO
While 20 is not a large number, you probably will not remember them all in one sitting, 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:
1-10: QIN IDE EXO OWO ENE ITA OYE JAI ZEA URE 11-20: JOR IWI AIA AYU ZEL WEX WOF WOX NYE OBO 21-30: ZEX AME TEX ONY DZO NEF ZOL DOF GIO YEX ...
"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 NWL and VIFDA in CSW.
Of the CSW-only 3s, the one that comes up by far the most is QIN, the Chinese musical instrument. Other interesting patterns emerge such as ?W? being valid with all 5 vowels: AWA, EWE, IWI, OWO, and UWU, but it is not 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, high probability (or playability) bingos, dump-words such as 4s with 2 Is, and words with Q but not the Qu combination.
2s: EA EE IO OO OU 3s: AIA AUA AUE 4s: EUOI HIOI EVOE ONIE IDEE VIAE HUIA ALOO EOAN AITU ... 5s: AENEI AIDOI AINEE AULOI BOOAI OUIJA ZOAEA ZOOEA 6s: EUOUAE ZOAEAE ZOOEAE 7s: ETAERIO EATERIE AIERIES OLEARIA EUGARIE DOULEIA MOINEAU AURELIA EUOUAES EQUINIA ... 8s: ETAERIOS ERIONITE AEROTONE NOTITIAE DOUANIER AEGIRITE AEGIRINE INAURATE OLEARIAS ETOURDIE ...
J: JA
JAI JOR JOL JAP JIZ ...
JOBE BENJ JUVE JAGA ROJI ...
OUIJA JEWIE JIRRE JOBED JIGOT ...
Q: QIN
QINS WAQF FIQH QUOP QUEP ...
QEEMA TALAQ QORMA QUOIF QUOAD ...
X: EXO WEX WOX ZEX TEX ...
WEXE GREX DIXI FAIX ULEX ...
VITEX VIBEX JAXIE XOANA WEXED ...
Z: ZE ZO
ZEA ZEL ZEX DZO ZOL ...
LAZO TREZ ZITE ZOOT ZATI ...
ZOAEA ZOOEA AVIZE ZANTE SQUIZ ...
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
...
7s: NOTAIRE OTARINE ETAERIO ALERION OARIEST OTARIES ROASTIE ORIGANE ENTRAIL RESIANT ... 8s: TAILERON ANOESTRI ARSONITE NOTAIRES ROSINATE ETAERIOS DONARIES DOUANIER ALERIONS SOTERIAL ...
I: IWI
DIVI DIXI FIFI FINI HIOI ISIT MIHI PIPI SIMI SIRI WILI
U: UMU UTU UWU
HUHU KUKU KUTU KUZU PUKU PULU RURU SUSU UMUS UTUS WUDU ZULU
FIQH -s QAMEEZ -es TALAQ -s
GUQIN -s QASIDA -s TSADDIQ -s
INQILAB -s QAWWAL -s TSADDIQIM
MUQADDAM -s QEEMA -s TZADDIQ -s
QABALISM -s QIN -s TZADDIQIM
QABALIST -s QINGHAOSU -s WAQF -s
QABALISTIC QINTARKA YAQONA -s
QAIMAQAM -s QORMA -s
QALAMDAN -s QWERTIES
The basics above are easily enough for a good CSW game. But you may decide that you wish to go further.
A significant downside to going further is that it can be difficult to keep the two lexica separate. Although remembering which of the words you now know are “new” is not too bad (think back to the last dictionary update, if you have been playing that long), remembering a word and remembering which lexicon it is in are not the same thing, especially over a period of time. The CSW words may come back to haunt you in a NWL game a few months down the line!
But nevertheless, some people have high ratings at both NWL and CSW, and one can get to quite a high standard quite quickly.
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 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 Collins Cheat Sheet, that is designed to be used as a reference by players of CSW who started off using NWL, in settings that allow it.
It resembles the original Cheat Sheet by Mike Baron, and the NSA’s “Important Words to Raise Your Score” sheet that was given to new members, except that it concentrates on CSW words.
There is also a Collins Cheat Sheet Part 2, which contains a useful array of the hooks to CSW 2s, and the full set of CSW 4s.
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.
For further resources regarding the CSW words, including word study software such as Zyzzyva, see the Collins links page.
Please direct comments about this page to its author, Nick Ball.
This page was last edited on 22 August 2025, at 13:57. Privacy policy
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