Grrrrrr – Scrabble ignoramuses, keep your traps shut
I need a rant. Last night when Mrs MSE and I were on one of our Scrabble dates (2for1 restaurant voucher and Travel Scrabble – I know how to show a girl a good time), an American chap at the next table leant over and said: "You shouldn’t be allowed to use those silly words; you should only use normal words."
People seem to have an inherent need to interfere in Scrabble and this is quite a common comment. Luckily, he said it with a twinkle in his eye, or I’d have told him to bog off.
It’s the frustrating lack of logic in this sentiment that gets my goat. Please tell me what a ‘normal word’ actually is – a doctor may use zygote in everyday speech, a healer chi and a classicist xi.
With such a discontinuity of vocabularies we therefore need to find a way to police ‘normality’. You could play to the lowest common denominator, leaving the board filled with the, cat, sat, on and mat.
Or, how about this: you could consistently define all the permissible words somewhere – perhaps in a manual? Now that’s a clever idea. Why don’t we call it a dictionary? Then Scrabble players could refer to it to see what a word is, and if they want to improve, they could learn more words like AE, AA, QI, QAT, JO, ZO that weren’t in their particular lexicon when they started.
Related past blogs
- Finally my Scrabble score averages 400 (in 694 games) – Now I’ll need to change my Who’s Who!
- The new Scrabble words – a player’s analysis of how useful they are
- Finally cracked a 600 score at Scrabble! Hoorah
- New Scrabble Rules Must Be a Joke – Is it a late April Fool?
- 158 point single go scrabble joy
- Scrabble – an easy way to win
- I scored 596 at Scrabble, so why does it depress me?
- SUPER SCRABBLE! WOW!
