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I’ve just made a small update to the dictionaries on the Scrabble Helper site:

• I’ve added a new dictionary called ‘USA home & school’ – this is the ‘Official Scrabble Players Dictionary’ (OSPD4), sometimes referred to as ‘Merriam Webster’.  It’s based on the official USA Tournament dictionary (Tournament Word List or TWL06) but has removed the more offensive words, so is often used in homes and schools.  The official online version of Scrabble in the USA offers this as an alternative to the TWL dictionary, so it’s useful to include here.
• I’ve updated the Words With Friends dictionary, since the latest update to Words With Friends removed 14 words that could be considered offensive from their dictionary.  I’ve therefore removed those 14 words to keen mine accurate.

As always, if you notice any problems, let me know.

I’ve just put live one of the biggest upgrades to the site since I launched it 4 years ago!

There are four main improvements:

1. We now show results for “lateral play” – that’s when you play a new word alongside an existing word, forming lots of 2 letter words in the process.  This can be a way to make serious points in a game!  I’m very excited about this feature as I’ve wanted to do it for a long time, but it’s pretty hard.  Most Scrabble Solver sites don’t even try!
2. You can now put ‘wildcards’ in the ‘Existing word’ box.  So if you had two existing words on the board, and wanted to play a word that crossed both of them, you can enter letters from each, with ? for each empty space between them.  For example, perhaps you want to include the G from one word, and the T from another, and there are two empty squares between them, you’d enter G??T.  Scrabble Helper might suggest GIFT or YOGURT or GRATIFY.
3. I’ve put some pop-up help pages throughout the site to make it easier to work out how to use all the features.  Just click ‘show help’ next to each item.
4. I’ve added two new dictionaries:
   (a) the new International 2012 dictionary which came into effect on 1 January this year (also known as CSTCWL/CSW/SOWPODS 2012).  Most online games and apps are still using the 2007 version, but the new version is there ready for you once they update
   (b) a generic dictionary which contains only words that are present across all Scrabble dictionaries. This means any words we suggest are likely to be accepted by most games, but we might not always suggest the best words.  However if you find your word game is using an obscure dictionary you might find the generic dictionary matches it better than the others.

I’ve also fixed a couple of bugs:

1. An annoying bug that tripped up many people – if you accidentally typed a space into one of the boxes, we didn’t return any results.  Now we do
2. When the list of results is sorted by score, the words with the same score were shown in reverse alphabetical order.  They’re now in correct alphabetical order

I hope you find the upgrades useful.  As it’s such a big change there is a possibility of teething troubles.  Let me know if there are any problems and I’ll sort them out.

Of course, if you have the Word Finder for Scrabble iPhone app, I’m sure you’ll be wondering if these features will make it to the app.  Well the answer is yes!  All these new features will be in the next update

Do you like crosswords as well as Scrabble?

Do you have an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad?

Then you might be interested in my new FREE app – The Crossword Solver.

Click here to download it from the App Store

Get it in time to help out with those lazy post-Christmas crosswords

If you already have my Word Finder for Scrabble app, then thank you for downloading it, and thank you all for your comments and suggestions.  I’m hoping to make a few improvements based on your comments, and will release an update next year.

Thanks to all of you who’ve already download the Word Finder iPhone App!

The special launch offer is now over 

However I’ve been persuaded to put together an extended offer for the rest of the launch week

Until this Thursday, anyone who buys the app can get:

• 50% off my Scrabble ebook
• a free Scrabble Cheat Sheet to download

Click here to download it from the App Store.

Don’t forget to claim your offer after buying the app!

PS. A few people have asked if the app will work on the iPad.  Yes – it works on any iOS device from version 3 onwards – that’s iPod touch, any iPhone, and iPad 1 and 2.  I haven’t redesigned the layout for the iPad’s bigger screen, so it will still look like an iPhone app, but it runs fine!

I released the new iPhone version of Scrabble Helper on the App Store today.

On the App Store it goes under the long-winded name “Word Finder for Scrabble, Word With Friends, etc” but I call it “Word Finder” for short

Click here to download it from the App Store.

I’ve created a video showing the App in action, and also put together a special offer for anyone buying it in the first few days.

Click here for details.

Last year I did a survey of all the users of Scrabble Helper, and the number 1 most requested feature was a version for the iPhone.

Well it’s taken me rather a long time, but I’ve finally finished it, and it’s going to be released in the iPhone App Store this Thursday!

On the App Store it goes under the long-winded name “Word Finder for Scrabble, Word With Friends, etc” but I call it “Word Finder” for short

I’ve created a video showing how it works, and put all the information on this page: Scrabble Word Finder App for iPhone.

I’ve also put together a really good offer for anyone who buys it on the first 2 days – but you have to be quick, the special offer will be taken down at the end of Saturday.

I expect the App to go live on Thursday at about 8pm GMT (that’s 1pm PDT, 4pm EDT) – and in Australia that’ll be early Friday morning.

I’ve just heard that Words With Friends is now available on Facebook.  I’ve played it on my iPhone before, but I’m now going to check out the new version.  It’s at http://apps.facebook.com/wordswithfriends/

Remember, Scrabble Helper works beautifully with Words With Friends, just select the ‘Words With Friends’ option under ‘Choose your dictionary’.

Hi guys,

I’ve got some news I’m really excited about!

For the last 4 months I’ve been working with Todd Kreisman – author, stand-up comedian, and most importantly brilliant Scrabble player to create an amazing book on Scrabble Strategy.

Todd took an incredible journey for us, playing ten games of Scrabble with players of increasing ability, until he was playing the very best players on the internet.

And he wrote down every single move he made, every word he played, and exactly what he was thinking when he made that move, and why he did it.

It’s like being inside his head as he plays!

And he complements all this with the very best advice on Scrabble strategy out there.

I hope you’ll be as excited as me when you see the book.  Head over to the ebook page for more details.

And I’ve got a special offer for all my blog readers to celebrate the Summer holidays: just enter SUMMERHOLIDAY in the coupon box when you checkout to get 10% off!  But be quick, the voucher is only valid until 7th August!

I’ve just added a few pages to the site for people wanting to improve their Scrabble, Lexulous or Words With Friends knowledge.

These are a set of Scrabble Word Lists that are useful for revising/preparing for a game.  Such things as all the 2 letter words, all the words that use Q without a U, all the words that use more than one of the ‘high score’ letters, that sort of thing.

Either click the Word Lists tab above, or follow this link: Scrabble Word Lists.

Are there any other lists you’d like to see?  Let me know!

Scrabble Helper user Mark recently suggested an improvement to allow him to use Scrabble Helper on his iPad.

The problem is that Apple products ‘auto correct’ whatever you type in (which can have annoying yet hilarious consequences – as seen on the excellent website damnyouautocorrect.com).

Obviously that’s not so good when you’re trying to enter a random assortment of letters from your Scrabble rack as it tries to make sense of it and ‘correct’ your mistyping.

After a bit of research I’ve found out how to get Scrabble Helper to tell iPads, iPhones and iPods not to auto correct the letters as you input them.

So hopefully Mark can can back to enjoying Scrabble Helper from the comfort of his iPad