I write long legal documents for a living. This dictionary is in my lap daily. It is known in my office as "Big Blue" in referance to the IBM super computer. You cant find a better workable dictionary.

Do NOT--repeat, NOT--buy "Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary, Special Second Edition" ISBN 679450262, [RHCUD-SSE] unless what you really want is the accompanying CD-ROM version 2.0. The hardcopy book is a shabby and disappointing substitute for "Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Second Edition" ISBN 679429174 [RHUD-SE], but the CD-ROM is a vast improvement over earlier versions. If all you want is the CD-ROM you can purchase it separately from Random House (1-800-793-2665) or its outlets for $20.

Oddity#1: the CD-ROM title is "Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary," ISBN 67944998.

RHCUD-SSE is slightly smaller (1 inch in height and 3/4 inch in width) than RHUD-SE, due to smaller type and narrower gutters. The paper is darker and of poorer quality, book construction is inferior, and there are 8 thumb notches instead of 15. RHCUD-SSE lacks the 32-page colored World Atlas of RHUD-SE, as well as the portion of the 200-page supplement of the latter containing a list of colleges and universities and small foreign language dictionaries (Spanish, French, Italian and German). RHCUD-SSE does not have the front and rear end papers of RHUD-SE, although they are listed on its Contents page.

The text on the back of the RHCUD-SSE dust jacket says, in big type, "Nothing Removed," but this is at best misleading since the following small type says "complete vocabulary" and just ignores the important deletions noted above.

Additions in RHCUD-SSE include 1000 new words (isolated in an 8-page addendum at the front of the book), and a section on Avoiding Sexism in the Manual of Style. The latter has hints such as rewriting sentences to use "they" in place of "he," and asking a female thespian if she prefers to be referred to as "actor" or "actress." (God help the people who wrote this section if they ever run into Katharine Hepburn!)

Oddity #2: neither this dictionary nor any of the others I have looked into includes the word that won the 1997 Spelling Bee, "euonym."

The CD-ROM version 2.0 integrates nicely with Windows 95. It does about the same things version 1.0 did, but it does them in the Windows 95 style--which I consider a great improvement. More importantly, it contains over 2000 line drawings and offers spoken pronunciation of 120,000 of its 315,000 words (sound card required)--features completely lacking in version 1.0.

In sum, the programmers did a good job; the publishers, bookmakers and advertising copywriters did a poor one.

There are many versions of this product. Mine has two ISBN's 0-679-45019-X for the CD-Rom component and 0-679044998-1 for the Software package. It is based on the 2nd Printed Edition with a copyright 1996. Recently I acquired the 'Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictinary.' I was able to put it through its paces by seeimg how easily I was able to solve crossword puzzles in an old "Giant Crossword Puzzle Book" from the New York Times' Will Weng, editor. I am not very good so normally I use the big "The Master Crossword Puzzle Dictionary' by Herbert M. Raus. This is an excellent reference in and of itself but availabilty over the year has not be consistent. Barnes and Noble, the bookstore is the publisher and distributor. I was able to also compare the Random House with Softkey's version of the "The American Heritage Dictionary" (AHD). I also have dictionaries on my Britannica and Worldbook CD's but the search engine for these dictionaries is simply 'enter the word'. The Random House may be the second largest dictionary, second to the full OED, at least until Oxford comes out with the New Shorter OED on CD this Spring (1997). It has far more words than the American Heritage as well as more meanings per word. It is a good collection of geographic, biographical and botanical references. It has etymologies, the AHD does not. Most words have a speaker icon which gives either a male or femaie voice (only one per word). Some animal, plant and boat words have line diagrams that are resizeable and savable.The Random House's main screen is itself resizable unlike the American Heritage(AHD). The Random House has five 'Search types'. Anagrams will allow you to cheat at scrabble on the PC. 'View History' is a list of words (1-100 default 20) you have looked up which is maintained in a file. The AHD has a similar list but starts from scratch at startup. More useful are the remaining three modes. 'Browse on Index' gives you a list of words which is refined as you type in letters. The Browse list appears in a narrow word list subscreen to the left and the right is a wider definition of the either the first word found or the last one you clicked on before entering another letter. You control the relative size of these subscreens and Preferences provides for an alternate vertical layout. 'Search on Main entry' requires you to enter an entire word and gives just that one definition unless you enter wildcards: ? for a single letter, * for one or more. Then, it creates a list of all qualifying words. Now, if you mistype and that sequence of letters is not a word, you get a word list of possible words. This is quite nice. The first letter of the suggested words are not all from the first letter you typed. Still better (and here RH is superior to the AHD) you can spell the word as it is pronounced and the correctly spelled suggestion appears. For example, both 'koopon' and 'kyoopon' will give you 'coupon' and a few other words. Finally we come to 'Search on Definitions'. You can search on either phrases surrounded by quotes or single words connected by booleans but not both. That is you cannot do a search like: "in the recent past" & time. In this case, actually: recent & past is more useful selecting one entry the phrase 'ancient history'. The booleans can be grouped and you can select the connectors with the mouse from a list that includes '&', '|', '!' '(..}', wild cards ?, * and quotes. You refine a list of anded words and specify that they appear within n-words of each other. Case sensitivity and a few other 'filters' are available. The main entry, the word itself, is part of the search unless you turn it off in the Filter screen. The problem is way too many false positives. The definitions are from the printed edition so there is no expectation for a computer. Otherwise, the same phrasology for the same meaning might have been used. Another possibile improvement is to be able to filter by length of word as you can under the search from Main entry when you enter single letter wildcards. Still another is the ability to do a search on the results of the previous search. Actually, this is an area for some experimentation. One thought I had was to create a Thesaurus that had every word in the dictionary. You could then select the one definition of one word and the implied thesaurus would generate the word list. Cross-references to other lists would be appear in a sub-screen. Perhaps, on DVD, the same thesaurus could index a dictionary of quoatations as well. The AHD comes with a thesaurus but it has few words than the dictionary. For example, the dictionary has quizzical but not the thesaurus. Enter 'odd' and you get the list of words that is close. The AHD has a 'word hunter' that compares with the Random House's Search on Definitions but, of course, having fewer words, you often come up empty, e.g. animals and plants, geographic locations, biographies, gods and godesses. On the other hand, except for restaurants and aquariums. Its small size and price can be a plus. I work with the Random House with the CD online to avoid using up hard disk space. The AHD I run from disk and it searches faster partly do to size of course. The Baus crossword puzzle is the equal to both dictionaries and the Britannica as a puzzle solver. Who does what it would be on CDROM. Crossword puzzle dictionaries deserve more recogniztion. I suspect most have not been constructed by lexicographers. Their organization is a combination of a synonym finder and keyword encylopedia. Many entries are by topic. For example, if you look up 'Fowl' you get a list of synonyms, the entries under subtopics: castrated, coop, crested, disease, domestic breed, male, small, stuffed, etc. The subtopics were extracted from puzzle clues so they turn out to be very useful.