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Listener Erica commented: "Perhaps an idea for a bonus ep of Four Letter Word season would be one on two-letter words: there’s an established list that Scrabble nerds end up memorizing, and it’s full of weirdness." In fact, there are TWO established lists, NASPA, the North American Scrabble Players Association, which has currently 107 two-letter words, and Collins Scrabble Words, formerly known as SOWPODS, used by the rest of the world and contains at present 127 two-letter words.
And this episode, we're going to hear all those two-letter words. If you don't agree with their Scrabbular validity, don't blame me! Some of the inclusions were a surprise, frankly!
Events are coming up in Vancouver BC: I’m performing a new piece of work about Dracula and Scandinavian translations thereof at Nerd Nite at the Fox Cabaret on 10 September - tickets are here - and talking with Samin Nosrat about her new book Good Things at the Chan Centre on 16 October, for which tickets are here.
EXTRA INFO:
The Collins Dictionary’s Scrabble word checker.
Join NASPA and/or sign up to their mailing list for weekly updates about tournaments.
To get the current NASPA word list you need to buy it or be a member, but Scrabble Word Finder tells you in which word list the two-letter words are valid.
cross-tables.com also has information about tupcoming tournaments and recent scores.
Words which were valid in the CSW but not NASPA list.
About the ʻōʻō bird - presumed extinct, but it has made a comeback twice before…
Otherlusionists: Two or More, studying seventy years of turbulent existence for the word ‘bisexual’; No Title, which mentions genderfree pronouns; in Technobabble, we hear about NASA workers using Scrabble word generators to help them come up with names for missions; in Word Play, word game-maker Leslie Scott notes Scrabble’s invention by a statistician; and there’s the Word Play series about word games.
And, if you want other lists of things you can listen to, to help you drift of to sleep or calm your brain down, there are all the Tranquillusionists.
Support the show at theallusionist.org/donate and as well as keeping this independent podcast going, you also get behind-the-scenes info about every episode, livestreams where I read from my ever-growing collection of dictionaries, and the charming and nurturing Allusioverse Discord community, where we're watching the current season of Great British Sewing Bee and soon the new season of Great British Bake Off.
YOUR RANDOMLY SELECTED WORD FROM THE DICTIONARY:
tracasseries, plural noun, archaic: petty quarrels or annoyances.
Origin French, from tracasser 'to bustle or fuss'.
CREDITS:
This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman, on the unceded ancestral and traditional territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
The original Allusionist music is by Martin Austwick. Download his songs at palebirdmusic.com and listen to his podcasts Song By Song and Neutrino Watch.
Find the Allusionist at youtube.com/allusionistshow, instagram.com/allusionistshow, facebook.com/allusionistshow, @allusionistshow.bsky.social… Essentially: if I’m there, I’m there as @allusionistshow.
Back in two weeks with a new episode - HZ.
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