Tuesday 6 April 2010

Scrabble for Dummies?

Have you heard the latest? Scrabble has announced it will be changing the rules to allow proper nouns to be used. Apparently this is to encourage younger people to play the game.

A spokeswoman for the company said the use of proper nouns would "add a new dimension" to Scrabble and "introduce an element of popular culture into the game".

People's names, place names and brand names will now be permitted. Shame, I say!

I wonder if text spelling will be allowed in the next 'makeover'?

Apologies for the inverted 'S' in the photo. I only realised after I'd put the board away that I'd placed the tile upside down for the photo. It's not my misuse of the apostrophe!!

8 comments:

Mulier Fortis said...

Very amusing... especially the greengrocers' apostrophe!
;-)

Idle Rambler said...

Oh, you have those greengrocers too! :-)

gemoftheocean said...

Agree. What's the point.

"Sheniqua" and "Shenniq'a" and all permutations are now legit.

Feh.

on the plus side "ZZYZX" as my favorite place name is now legit. I suppose in theory there aren't enough "Z"s in the box, but I can use the blank as a "Z" and then lay an "N" sideways - then start to cry if my opponent protests and then claim "oppressed woman" status if the ball doesn't bounce my way.

Good grief. What in Hades is the world coming to?

Victor S E Moubarak said...

I am changing my name to Gxyzkquy.

How many points is that? And it's easier to pronounce than my real name!

Mary said...

You know if you did not say anything about it the "S" we would not have seen it


Oh Yes Just so you know I will be keeping my blogspot account open but as you know I will be bloging over at www.theeyesinwhichiseetheword.wordpress.com

Big Brother said...

In the same vein, I wonder if the Football Association (or FIFA) will be persuaded to widen goals to double present size?

Dominic Mary said...

I think we shall stick to 'House Rules' : viz. if it's not in the Shorter OED then it isn't allowed, except for plurals of nouns.

Also, if you resort to the Dictionary and are proved wrong, then you lose 10 points.

A persuasive reason for brushing up on one's English !

(I'll accept Merriam-Webster or F&W as acceptable equivalents for our US friends, although I still think that the OED is better, of course !)

Idle Rambler said...

It's interesting to see that most of my blogging friends are similarly unimpressed with Mattel's proposed 'dumming down' of the game.

I'll be sticking to the original rules if anyone wants to play. I shall pull the old, 'It's my game, so we play by my rules' trick! :0)