Dictionaries

About the dictionaries

Qat, Word Matcher, the Composite Anagram Finder, and Playfair Breaker give you the choice of several dictionaries:

• UKACD (UK Advanced Cryptics Dictionary), about 250000 words, is good for crossword setting and solving
• YAWL (Yet Another Word List), about 250000 words, is a copyright-free American list popular among Unix users
• Moby, about 600000 words, is part of Project Gutenberg
• ABLE (Alternate British LExicon), 200000 words, is a UK-oriented list designed for word puzzles
• SOWPODS, about 270000 words, is a standard word list used for Scrabble and other word games all over the world
• TWL, about 180000 words, is a standard word list used for Scrabble and other word games in the United States and elsewhere
• PDL, a public domain word list originally called PUBLIC.DICT.LARGE containing about 37000 reasonably common words with a slight academic bias
• BNC, a word list derived from the British National Corpus containing about 470000 strings, the great majority of which are words

In addition, there is also a ‘Union’ dictionary, which includes all entries found in any dictionary available to a given program. Note that not all dictionaries are available in all programs.

License texts

UKACD18

Copyright (c) 2009 J Ross Beresford
All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
are met:

1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
   notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
   notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
   documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

3. The name of the author may not be used to endorse or promote products
   derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES
OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED.
IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT,
INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT
NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE,
DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY
THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT
(INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF
THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

UKACD17

                     The UK Advanced Cryptics Dictionary

                A word list for crossword solvers and setters



                                    by

                              Ross Beresford



                               Version  1.7

                              23 August 2000



                 Copyright (c) J Ross Beresford 1993-2000

                            All Rights Reserved





                    The UK Advanced Cryptics Dictionary
                    is a FREEWARE package: it can be
                    freely copied and distributed under
                    the terms of the licensing agreement
                    at the end of this document.









        The author can be reached in the following ways:

             Internet address    ross@bryson.demon.co.uk

             Postal address      10 Wagtail Close
                                 Twyford
                                 Reading RG10 9ED
                                 United Kingdom

        INTRODUCTION
        ------------

        The UKACD is a word list compiled for the crossword community.

        In particular, it's intended for setters and solvers of
        advanced cryptic crosswords in the UK; for example, the
        Listener Crossword and the barred puzzles in the Sunday
        broadsheets.

        Although there are many word lists in the public domain, none
        is well suited for use with crossword construction and word
        search software.

        This freely distributable list should be more helpful, as it
        is specifically intended for use with crossword software. The
        list will be updated at periodic intervals to correct errors
        and make additions.

        The UKACD is in the ISO 8859-1 character set (compatible with
        the Windows ANSI character set), with a single entry per line.

        EDITORIAL POLICY
        ----------------

        The original basis for the UKACD was a word list of some
        500,000 entries, compiled from public domain sources.

        This was reduced to a list of around 190,000 words by
        eliminating entries that aren't generally allowable in
        UK advanced cryptic puzzles.

        The list continues to be improved as missing entries are
        discovered and added. A new update is issued when several
        thousand entries have been added since the previous one.

        The vocabulary included in the following single volume UK
        English dictionaries is used as a guide to acceptability:

            The Chambers Dictionary
            Collins English Dictionary
            The Concise Oxford Dictionary

        Words are given in all their inflected forms, where
        appropriate. That is, nouns are given in their plural
        form(s); verbs are given as the infinitive, third person
        singular, present and past participle; and the comparative
        and superlative forms of adjectives are included where
        they are reasonably common.

        Common proper names are included, as they are often found
        in crosswords, even though only Collins of the above
        dictionaries has a systematic coverage of them. Some very
        common words not to be found in any of the dictionaries
        are also included.

        To make the list more useful for compiling jumbo grids,
        longer non-dictionary entries are being added. These include:
        well-known quotations and proverbs; fictional characters and
        book titles; films, pieces of music and works of art.

        Some attempt is made to standardise the punctuation and
        capitalisation of entries; in particular, by ensuring all
        proper names start with a capital letter. However, no great
        effort is put into this, as it only marginally affects the
        usefulness of the list to crossworders.

        Dictionary entries only differing in punctuation, accenting or
        capitalisation are folded onto the single most common form.
        This is done to save space and, again makes little difference
        to the value of the UKACD to setters and solvers.

        FEEDBACK
        --------

        If you find any errors, or have suggestions for additions,
        please e-mail or post them to me at the address on the first
        page of this document. Provided they are within the scope of
        the UKACD, as defined under EDITORIAL POLICY, they will be
        included in the next release of the word list.


        LICENSING INFORMATION
        ---------------------

        Copyright (c) J Ross Beresford 1993-2000. All Rights Reserved.

        The following restriction is placed on the use of this
        publication: if The UK Advanced Cryptics Dictionary is used
        in a software package or redistributed in any form, the
        copyright notice must be prominently displayed and the text
        of this document must be included verbatim.

        There are no other restrictions: I would like to see the
        list distributed as widely as possible.

YAWL

                                 LICENSE

The YAWL list, word.list, is in the Public Domain. There are no
restrictions on its use or distribution.

The author decided to release the list into the Public Domain because
it is based primarily on other Public Domain lists by the author and
his colleague, Alan Beale, and applying the stricter GPL to it would
therefore be of doubtful validity.

The author has also released the source code to "anagram" and "multi"
(multiple word anagram) into the Public Domain. He had previously posted
these utilities on the "alt.sources" newsgroup in shar archive form.

The author has released his "wstrings.sh" script into the
Public Domain. It is part of his "Advanced Bash Scripting Guide"
[http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/] which is hosted on the Linux
Documentation Project (http://www.tldp.org).

Please feel free to use the word list and/or source code in your own
projects.  It is, in fact, the intent of the author that this package
inspire word game software for the Linux platform. If you use any
portion of YAWL, please, as a courtesy, give credit to its author.

Note that "Public Domain" *means* Public Domain. Even if portions or the
whole of this package are incorporated into a commercial or proprietary
application, those portions of YAWL within it *remain* Public Domain.

Moby

The Moby lexicon project is complete and has
been place into the public domain. Use, sell,
rework, excerpt and use in any way on any platform.

Placing this material on internal or public servers is
also encouraged. The compiler is not aware of any
export restrictions so freely distribute world-wide.

You can verify the public domain status by contacting

Grady Ward
3449 Martha Ct.
Arcata, CA  95521-4884

daedal@myrealbox.com

ABLE

The nearest thing to a licence text for ENABLE, of which ABLE forms a part, is as follows.

The ENABLE master word list, WORD.LST, is herewith formally released
into the Public Domain. Anyone is free to use it or distribute it in
any manner they see fit. No fee or registration is required for its
use nor are "contributions" solicited (if you feel you absolutely
must contribute something for your own peace of mind, the authors of
the ENABLE list ask that you make a donation on their behalf to your
favorite charity). This word list is our gift to the Scrabble community,
as an alternate to "official" word lists. Game designers may feel free
to incorporate the WORD.LST into their games. Please mention the source
and credit us as originators of the list. Note that if you, as a game
designer, use the WORD.LST in your product, you may still copyright and
protect your product, but you may *not* legally copyright or in any way
restrict redistribution of the WORD.LST portion of your product. This
*may* under law restrict your rights to restrict your users' rights,
but that is only fair.

M Cooper and Alan Beale

SOWPODS and TWL

These word lists are freely available for download from many sites on the Internet and appear to lack any licensing terms.

BNC

This word list is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License: see here for details. The list was obtained from UCREL.