That's a Valid Word?

The evil Laura has gotten me hooked on yet another Facebook word game. I don't think of myself as a computer-game addict, but I just can't resist any word game. This one, called Word Twist, requires finding all words of length 3 or greater from a set of 6 or 7 letters. It uses the Scrabble Tournament Word List and is an excellent Scrabble study aid.

In a recent game against Laura, I decided to try HOTTIE, without any real hope that it would be valid. Unlike the true Scrabble game, there's no penalty for entering an invalid word, except for the time you lose in typing it. Well, I was pleasantly surprised to find that HOTTIE is valid. Until now, my favourite Scrabble word has been BADASS, which has been around for a long time, appearing in the second edition of the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary. (We're using the fourth edition these days.)

Julia, who otherwise has no interest in Scrabble, was quite amused that HOTTIE and BADASS are valid Scrabble words. I did warn her not to play these words at school, as they are most likely omitted from the "School Edition" of the Scrabble dictionary, and her teachers would not be impressed. Besides, if she had two esses on her rack, she shouldn't waste them on a play like BADASS anyhow.