Slurs: never playable
Slurs and epithets that target someone's race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability can't be played in any game, in either dictionary. The word lookup in the game menu never shows them as valid. If you lay one down, Rackety tells you it isn't in the dictionary, the same as any other word it doesn't know.
That is the whole scope of this list. Crude words that aren't slurs are not on it.
The list started from NASPA's 2020 decision to remove offensive slurs from its tournament word list. NASPA didn't publish those words, so we built ours from the same categories and the reported examples, checked it against the slur entries of the open LDNOOBW list, and kept only words that were in ENABLE. If a slur is blocked, so is its plural, and where the verb form is the slur, so are its -ED and -ING forms. Words that only look like a slur, or start like one, are not touched.
Family exclusions
The Family dictionary is common English words only. On top of the slurs above, it leaves out crude, sexual and scatological words. Clinical and everyday words stay in (sex, hell, bloody, fart, poop), and so do words that only begin like a crude one (assess, titter, spice).
This list has no effect on the Standard dictionary.
Everything else is playable
Every other word in ENABLE, a public-domain list of about 168,000 words, is playable in the Standard dictionary, up to 15 letters, the width of the board. We don't judge taste beyond the two lists above: if a word is rude but not a slur, Standard accepts it and Family doesn't.
ENABLE predates a few modern two-letter favorites: it has XI, JO and QAT, but not QI or ZA.
Updates and fairness
The lists only change between app versions, never during a game. Words already on the board stay valid after an update, so a finished turn is never taken back. Games with friends on other devices will need the same lists on every device; if they differ, Rackety will ask everyone to update before the game goes on.
Appeals and suggestions
If you think a word is on the wrong side of either list, or a slur is missing, email hi@rackety.app with the word and which list it's about.
