How we check a word report

The email usually runs like this. A reader played a word last night, or had one played against them, and our word checker said it isn't in the list. They're polite about it, mostly. They're also certain. They've used this word for years, their club allows it, their phone game allows it, and a website that claims to check words has just told them it doesn't exist. So they write to Pangramist and ask, reasonably: did you get this one wrong?

Sometimes, yes. More often, no, and the interesting part is that both answers come out of the same check. This guide is that check, written down in the order we run it, so you can see what your report sets in motion and what each result means.

Step one: the list itself

Every report starts with the file. We search the cleaned word list the whole site runs on, the one built from ENABLE, a public domain list, with the removals and edits this site applies and writes down. If your word is there, the checker was wrong, or you typed it differently than you think, and either way the reply you get says so plainly and points you at the word's page.

More often, the word isn't there. That isn't the end of the check. It's the start, because "not in our file" can mean several different things and they don't all deserve the same answer.

Step two: the 1913 dictionary

Next we look for the word in Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary of 1913, the public domain dictionary our word pages draw their definitions from. This step catches the join errors. Our list and our dictionary are two files from two sources, and where they were matched up to build word pages, a real word can fall through the seam: present in the old book, missing from our file because of a spelling variant, an old-fashioned plural, or a headword form our build didn't recognise.

If your word stands in the 1913 text with a definition, that's strong evidence it's a genuine English word that belongs in the list. Words found this way get added, and the addition goes on the corrections page, dated, with a line saying a reader reported it. That's you. Several of the corrections already standing on that page arrived exactly this way, reported by someone who was told no and wrote in anyway.

Step three: a second public domain source

If the 1913 book doesn't have it, we look for a second public domain source, another old dictionary or text old enough to be free of copyright and solid enough to trust. One old source can be a fluke or a misprint. Two independent old sources agreeing that a word exists is a much better bet.

If neither source holds the word, we go looking for why you believe in it, because that usually explains everything. The most common story, by a wide margin, is the tournament lists. QI and ZA are real words in rated tile-game play. They're also not in ENABLE, never have been, and so they're not in our list, and our checker is giving you the right answer about our list while your club is giving you the right answer about theirs. Guide 19 and guide 20 cover that gap in full. Other frequent stories: the word is a proper name, which lists exclude as a class; it's an abbreviation; it's a word your family has used for forty years that turns out to live only in your family's kitchen. That last one is more common than anyone admits, and there's no shame in it. Every family has one.

What you get back

Either way, you get a reply. If the word is added, the reply says it's added, and the corrections page shows it. If it isn't, the reply says why, in the specific terms of your word, not in boilerplate: which sources we checked, what we found, and which list does hold your word if one does. A no from us is a no about our list, stated as such, never a claim that your word isn't a word in some wider sense. Word lists are decisions. Ours are written down, and the report route is how readers argue with them.

Reports also do quieter work. A cluster of reports about one letter pattern can point at a whole seam in the build, a set of words dropped together by one bad rule, and that's happened. Your one email about one word can be the thread that, pulled, fixes two hundred words. Send it.

Report a word

If the checker has told you no and you think it's wrong, write to the report address on any checker result page, or start from the corrections page, where you'll also find every change reports like yours have already made. Tell us the word, where you've seen it played or printed, and anything else you know. Then give us a little time to run the three steps properly. We'd rather answer slowly and correctly than fast and wrong. The corrections page is waiting.