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All 7s and 8s

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Updated Dec. 10th, 2006

It is probably not easy to find French Scrabble sets in retail, but with Internet Scrabble Club you can play Scrabble in French.

French-English words

Even if your school days are far away, you already know more words than you think. Find below the lists of SOWPODS words acceptable in French Scrabble.

You already "know" 1/8 of the vocabulary !

Official dictionary

The official reference for all competitions endorsed by the Fédération Internationale de Scrabble Francophone (FISF) is the Officiel du jeu Scrabble published by Larousse/FISF. The fourth edition, commonly referred to as ODS or ODS4, is valid from Jan. 1st 2004.

The complete ODS4 list (369085 words, from 2 to 15 letters) can be downloaded here.

Next edition, ODS5 is released in Summer 2007, and come into force Jan 1st 2008.

Letter distribution

Differences in frequency and value with the English set are highlighted above. Let's go through the most important ones:

• 7 high scorers:  K, W, X, Y and Z are worth 10 points, J and Q, 8 points.
• 6 U instead of 4, which make the Q easier to handle, but there is no word as convenient as QI in French.
• 6 S instead of 4: this letter is also very commonly used in French and most word are pluralized with it.

Starter lists

Like in English, it is mandatory to master small words. There are almost half less than in English (75/560 compared to 121/1229). Due to their number (7), it is also very useful to know words with high scorers.

• 2 and 3 letter words with their definitions.
• High scorers (2 to 4 letter words for J, K, X, Y and Z, until 5 letter words for W and Q).
• Short verbs

Words with Q without U : half less than in English and most of them are already familiar to you. All words not followed by '/' take an 'S' for the plural.

Bonus words

To put his 7 letters down is called scrabbler in French, and a bonus is a scrabble... You will need new automatisms to associate letters but conjugations will make it easier to find bonus words : 80 per cent of bonus words played are inflected verbs.

A simple, regular verb like AIMER will give 37 words !

Now, as an exercise, try to determine which tenses, persons are used in the above table..., just kidding :-). The bad news is (and you already remember some nightmares during French lessons...) that defective verbs are common and much more difficult to learn than English irregular verbs : there are 105 conjugation models described in the ODS.

Common typical endings like -EUR, -EUSE (someone doing something), -AGE (actions), -OIR (tools) or prefixes like DE-, RE-, SUR- allow lots of words but also some challenges!

You can download the French equivalent of «All 7s and 8s» : Tous les 7 et 8 (308 pages).

French Scrabble lexicon

In conclusion...

Whether you would like to improve your French, to learn always more and more words or simply for a change, playing in a different language is an enriching experience. Why do not set up a French section in your club or develop Scrabble at school?

And, on top of that, keep in mind that it would be probably much easier for you to qualify for the French World Scrabble Championship than to qualify for the English WSC.

French Scrabble is mainly played in Duplicate, but in Québec 2007, after Tours 2006, the 2nd World Cup of "classic" Scrabble will be organized (14 games + best-of-3 final). There is one seat for each country not affiliated to FISF. For more information, contact us.