215. Two-Letter Words
The Allusionist
Helen Zaltzman
4.7 • 3.8K Ratings
🗓️ 26 August 2025
⏱️ 19 minutes
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Summary
Listener Erica commented: "Perhaps an idea for a bonus ep of Four Letter Word season would be one on two-letter words: there’s an established list that Scrabble nerds end up memorizing, and it’s full of weirdness." In fact, there are TWO established lists, NASPA, the North American Scrabble Players Association, which has currently 107 two-letter words, and Collins Scrabble Words, formerly known as SOWPODS, used by the rest of the world and contains at present 127 two-letter words.
And this episode, we're going to hear all those two-letter words. If you don't agree with their Scrabbular validity, don't blame me! Some of the inclusions were a surprise!
Visit theallusionist.org/two for more information about today's two-letter words, plus a transcript of the episode.
Support the show at theallusionist.org/donate and as well as keeping this independent podcast going, you also get behind-the-scenes info about every episode, livestreams where I read from my ever-growing collection of dictionaries, and the charming and nurturing Allusioverse Discord community, where we're watching the current season of Great British Sewing Bee and soon the new season of Great British Bake Off.
This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman, on the unceded ancestral and traditional territory of xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. The music is by Martin Austwick; download his songs at palebirdmusic.com and on Bandcamp, and listen to his podcasts Song By Song and Neutrino Watch.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the illusionist in which I, Helen Zaltzman, cheat on my own four-letter words season, |
| 0:10.0 | thanks to this suggestion from listener Erica. |
| 0:12.6 | Perhaps an idea for a bonus episode of a four-letter word season would be one on two-letter words. |
| 0:19.7 | There's an established list that Scrabble nerds end up memorising, |
| 0:23.0 | and it's full of weirdness. |
| 0:25.1 | For example, A-A, O-E and M-M are all acceptable words, |
| 0:30.6 | but E-W is not. |
| 0:33.5 | Spoiler, EW-E-O, is now. |
| 0:37.2 | It was added to the Scrabble dictionary in 2018. So, EW. Ew! is now. It was added to the Scrabble Dictionary in 2018. So, enjoy that. |
| 0:42.1 | There are two different lists of words in English deemed acceptable in Scrabble. Naspur, |
| 0:48.4 | the North American Scrabble Players Association, which has currently 107 two-letter words, and Colin Scrabble words, formerly |
| 0:57.8 | known as SOPODs, used by the rest of the world that's not North America, and contains at present |
| 1:03.9 | 127 two-letter words. Scrabble doesn't allow proper nouns or initialisms or prefixes or suffixes or some abbreviations, but other abbreviations are fine. |
| 1:16.7 | Anyway, here are the two letter words that are allowed in Scrabble. |
| 1:21.0 | So if you are playing one of them and your opponent calls you out on it and it's like, it's not real. And you can say, actually, it means a digging tool. |
| 1:31.0 | If you are in Vancouver, BC, I've got a couple of events coming up. |
| 1:35.2 | I'll be talking about the rather surprising Icelandic translation of Dracula |
| 1:39.2 | at Nerd Night on 10th of September 2025 at the Fox Cabaret. And on 16th of October, I'll be talking |
| 1:47.4 | with Samin Nostra about her new book, Good Things, the follow-up to the super-hit cookbook and TV show, |
| 1:53.0 | Salt Fat, Acid Heat. That's at the Chan Center. I've linked to tickets to both events at the |
| 1:58.2 | illusionist.org slash events. Also, thanks to all of you who came along to the |
| 2:02.1 | Illusionist Beach meetup this month, |
... |
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