LONDON (TIP): The next time you want to outplay your opponent in a game of scrabble, go for a slang. Chances are that they would be the highest scoring new words. Thousands of slang words, used on social media, texts and on the street are now available to Scrabble enthusiasts seeking to outplay their opponents.

Collins scrabble dictionary on Thursday added 6,500 new words to the existing quarter of a million words in the Scrabble wordlist.

BEZZY for best friend could fetch you 18 points, DENCH meaning excellent could be an 11-point winner, LOLZ meaning laughs at someone else’s or one’s own expense could be worth 13 points while WUZ – a non-standard spelling of ‘was’ could fetch you 15 points.

The new wordlist also recognizes the role of technology and electronic communication with the addition of FACETIME (worth 15 points), HASHTAG, like the one on Twitter, and HACKTIVIST – a person who hacks computer systems for political reasons each being 22 points, while SEXTING -the practice of sending sexually explicit text messages being 15 points.

Speaking to TOI, Helen Newstead, head of language content, Collins said “These words have gained popularity, yes, but there is also a host of written evidence for these words that we didn’t have before. To create the Scrabble wordlist, you need evidence of usage. Dictionaries have always included formal and informal English, but it used to be hard to find printed evidence of the use of slang words. Now people use slang in social media posts, tweets, blogs, comments, text messages, so there’s a host of evidence for informal varieties of English that simply didn’t exist before.”

She added that the Collins language-tracking programme analyses the use of language across a variety of media and the latest words are the result of collection and analysis of words over the last four years.