Scrabble's "rule change" gives purists the vapors

Scrabble's "rule change" gives purists the vapors

www.salon.com

Could the rumors be true, Scrabble? Could the venerable word game/choking hazard/nerd form of foreplay be changing the rules?

On Tuesday, the BBC reported that "a new version" of the game, aimed at younger players and debuting this July, would permit – maybe you should sit down for this – proper nouns.

I'll get the smelling salts. A spokeswoman for Mattel told the BBC that the change would "add a new dimension" and "introduce an element of popular culture into the game ... This is one of a number of twists and challenges included that we believe existing fans will enjoy and wi

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As a long time Scrabble enthusiast, I think this "rule change" is abominable. For starters, there are so many spellings of proper nouns how do you decide which ones are admissible: Bob or Bobby or Bobbi? Anabel or Annabelle? Gwendolyn or Guindoline or Gwendoline? Caroline or Carolyn? You can put together almost any combination of letters and claim it's a name.

The triumph of a good Scrabble player is his or her extensive vocabulary, reinforced with an official Scrabble dictionary.

This makes it too easy. I see no reason to dumb down the game just to appeal to younger players. They should be expected to master the skills required to play the game and step up to the challenge.

www.salon.com
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I'm with you. I saw this nonsense and their reasoning behind it, to make it easier for younger people and I wanted to puke.

I started playing when I was a kid and I picked up the trick words over the years, learned to bluff some phonies onto the board (my sister is an easy mark) and I've read up on the 2 letter words, words without vowels and the q without u words. now, any moron can play and use practically anything.

I won't ever allow anyone who's stuck with too many vowels to drop Anfernee on me. Just not happening.


Ok, now, I think they meant proper nouns, as in names of countries and whatnot, not people's names. I mean, seriously, how will you refute the argument of "no, really, I went to school with a dude named zaquxij, he's from tibet."

Well, as a scrabble addict (see my titles :p) I think using proper nouns would be a huge mistake, not just because of the variant spellings, but because you could literally spell ANYTHING. Qwgjh? That's the name of my cat. Sdhiefll? That's what I named my right eyebrow.

The idea of ways to steal letters, spell things backwards, and so on, sounds interesting (kind of like how they souped up classical Risk and made Risk 2210AD) and as long as they are separate games I have no problem with that.

Man.... I saw this too and It's ridiculous.
I used to play Scrabble quite a lot but haven't for a while after most places started charging.

This new "Rule change" is just ridiculous...

What next.... Let's make Scrabble easier for the kids of today... The word can be spelled wrong if only one letter is wrong?

I'm glad this isn't a revamp of the whole game and it's only a new version.... but It's still a piss take.

I've also heard that they'll be making it so you can spell words backwards and diagonally too?

Why..... why do they have to mess with it?

Huge Scrabble Fan Here...

Is this just another step in the "Dumbing Down of America"?

At what point do we just stop teaching our children, expecting them to excel, and let them just be automatons for the Gov?

I introduced the game to my daughters very early in their lives and soon they will both be graduating from college... Correlation? I think so..

Semper

reply to post by Crakeur


If you noticed, the illustrated board in the article had "Al Roker" on it. So I think that means names are acceptable. Unfortunately.