Scarab.

This page available in: French, English.

Introduction

Scarab is a Scrabble dictionary: give it some letters, it will list all known words that can be written using all these letters.

The database can be queried in the following ways:

Regular search (button labeled "Scarab lookup") looks for words that can be written using only the submitted letters, used in any order.
Anagram search (button labeled "Scarab exact lookup") looks for words containing each of the submitted letters exactly once.

Scarab avoids sending inordinately large replies by limiting the number of words per query to 2048 (for this version). When the limit is hit, words are given in an unspecified order. Otherwise, words are sorted by length and then alphabetically.

Blank tiles should be entered as "." or "?".

Database

French

Scarab's database of French words used to be based on Christophe Pythoud and Christophe Pallier's Liste de mots du français. One-letter words and compound words have been elided from this list, leaving 331781 remaining entries.

As of 2007-01-26, Scarab used the official list of French words acceptable for Scrabble: the "ODS4"; L'Officiel du jeu Scrabble–édition 2003, Larousse, ISBN 2035602874. This list comprises 369085 entries.

Since 2008-01-18, Scarab uses the "ODS5"; L'Officiel du jeu Scrabble–édition 2007, Larousse, ISBN 2035822203. This is a list of 378989 words: compared to the previous version, 9905 words have been added, and one has been removed.

English

Initially, Scarab simply used a file named crosswords.txt as its database. It only included 117972 words, and was of unknown, and possibly dubious, origins.

Since 2008-08-02, the English Scarab uses the SOWPODS dictionary, which comprises 267751 entries. SOWPODS is the official tournament dictionary for English Scrabble world-wide except for the United States, Canada, Thailand and Israel. Those countries use the TWL — Tournament Word List — instead, which contains only 178691 words, leading me to rule it less relevant for Scarab. I might be talked into making the TWL an option if there is sufficient demand.

Introduction

Database

French

English

See also