euouae is a study and word-checking app for competitive Scrabble and word-game players. It's a fast, offline alternative to Collins Zyzzyva — the tool many tournament players use to look words up and drill them into memory.
About the name. Zyzzyva was named for being the last word in word study — for years it was also the last word in the dictionary. That distinction slipped in 2015, when ZZZ and ZZZS were added to the word lists. I toyed with naming this app ZZZS to carry the torch, until I remembered it's essentially unpronounceable. So it's euouae instead — a word made entirely of vowels, and a longtime favourite of mine as an organist and Scrabble player. (Do look up what it means.)
- Judge words instantly. Type in one or more words and euouae tells you which are valid in the dictionary you've chosen — the same job a tournament word judge does at the board.
- Search for words by almost any criterion: a letter pattern, an anagram (which words a jumble of letters can spell), word length, the hooks a word takes (letters you can add to the front or back to make another valid word), how likely you are to draw it, and more.
- Look up any word to see its definition, its anagrams, the hooks it takes, and other study stats.
- Practise with spaced repetition. Quiz yourself and the app brings each word
back just as you're about to forget it, so your time goes to the words you
don't yet know cold. Two study systems are built in:
- Cardbox — the classic flashcard-box method (words you keep getting right come up less often; ones you miss come back sooner). It's the same system Zyzzyva uses, so if you're coming from Zyzzyva your routine and progress carry straight over.
- FSRS — a modern scheduling algorithm that learns how well you personally remember each word and picks the best moment to review it.
- Build and manage word lists, import them from a file, and export them in several formats (plain word lists, anagram question-and-answer sheets, and more).
- Bring your own word lists. You're not limited to the built-in dictionaries. Paste a list of words (or import a file) and euouae builds a complete, studyable lexicon from it in seconds — automatically working out every word's anagrams, hooks, point values, and draw odds. Great for a club list, a themed set, or a list of tricky words you keep missing.
- Any language, or your own tiles. Pick a built-in letter set — English, Spanish, French, German, or Russian — or define your own tiles from scratch (each letter's point value, how many are in the bag, and how many blanks). So you can study in another language or under house rules, not just standard English Scrabble.
- Several dictionaries, switch anytime. Comes with Collins CSW24, the North American NWL23, and French FRA24 built in.
- Fully offline and fast. Everything lives on your device — no account and no internet needed once it's installed — and it's built to be quick and keyboard-driven.
- Free and cross-platform. Runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Search — find words by anagram, pattern, length, hooks, probability and more. |
Lists — build study lists by hand, from a file, or straight from a search. |
Word Info — hooks, anagrams, definition and probability, live as you type. |
Study — spaced-repetition drills (FSRS or Cardbox) built from your lists. |
Light and dark themes are built in (with a picker to switch anytime):
Get the latest installers from the Releases page, then pick the file for your platform:
| Platform | File | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Windows 10/11 (64-bit) | euouae_<version>_x64-setup.exe |
Installs for your user only, no admin needed (goes to AppData\Local) |
| Windows 10/11 (64-bit) | euouae_<version>_x64_en-US.msi |
System-wide install to Program Files (needs admin) |
| macOS (Intel & Apple Silicon) | euouae_<version>_universal.dmg |
Universal build |
| Linux (any distro) | euouae_<version>_amd64.AppImage |
Portable — nothing to install |
| Linux — Debian/Ubuntu | euouae_<version>_amd64.deb |
|
| Linux — Fedora/RHEL/openSUSE | euouae-<version>-1.x86_64.rpm |
Heads-up: the app isn't code-signed yet, so Windows and macOS will show a security warning the first time you open it. This is expected — the steps below tell you how to get past it.
- Download the
-setup.exe(simplest) or the.msi. - Run it. If you see "Windows protected your PC", click More info → Run anyway — this only appears because the app isn't signed.
- Launch euouae from the Start menu.
- Open the
.dmgand drag euouae into your Applications folder. - The first launch is blocked because the app isn't notarized. To allow it,
open Terminal and run:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/euouae.app
- Open euouae from Applications or Launchpad.
AppImage (works on any distribution):
chmod +x euouae_<version>_amd64.AppImage
./euouae_<version>_amd64.AppImageIf it won't start, install FUSE (e.g. sudo apt install libfuse2 on Debian/Ubuntu).
Debian / Ubuntu (.deb):
sudo apt install ./euouae_<version>_amd64.debFedora / RHEL / openSUSE (.rpm):
sudo dnf install ./euouae-<version>-1.x86_64.rpmRequires Bun and the Rust toolchain, plus Tauri's system dependencies.
bun install
bun run tauri dev # run in development
bun run tauri build # build installers for your current OSOn Linux, building the AppImage may need two environment variables:
APPIMAGE_EXTRACT_AND_RUN=1 NO_STRIP=1 bun run tauri buildAPPIMAGE_EXTRACT_AND_RUN=1 avoids needing FUSE to run the bundler tooling.
NO_STRIP=1 is required on distributions whose libraries carry .relr.dyn
sections (Arch and other current rolling releases) — the strip binary shipped
inside linuxdeploy is too old to parse them and aborts the bundle.
euouae is free and always will be — no ads, no accounts, nothing locked behind a paywall. I build it in my own time because I want a genuinely good, offline study tool to exist for word-game players. If it's been useful to you and you'd like to give something back, I'd really appreciate it.
- Click the ♥ Sponsor button at the top of this page, or
- donate directly via PayPal: paypal.me/macaquedev.