Slashdot Mirror
Scrabble To Allow Proper Nouns
Hogwash McFly writes "The rules of the popular word game Scrabble are soon to allow proper nouns. Mattel, the maker of the game, hopes the changes made for a new edition, released this July, will 'add a new dimension' to Scrabble and 'introduce an element of popular culture into the game.' With this rule change, the company hopes to target younger fans and families, although they will continue to sell the traditional version where 'Beyonce' and 'Facebook' are not permitted words." Nobody is listening to my suggestion to penalize by one tile any player who has memorized every two-letter English word.
I'm waiting till they start to allow acronyms, so that we geeks can win with our multitude of TLAs.
For one thing, the article is about the Mattel version. Hasbro sells Scrabble crossword game in the United States and Canada, while arch-rival Mattel controls it everywhere else, so North Americans need not worry. For another, the article states that Mattel is making the proper name rule optional: "It will continue to sell a board with the original rules."
Yeah, there's appealing to the masses and then there's making it so your product no longer makes any sense. They've obvious chosen the Michael Bay approach.
1) Change your name via Deed-Poll to the letters left in your rack.
2) Place letters on board
3) ???
4) Profit!
In related news, Parker Bros is releasing a new edition of RISK that uses a single coin instead of 5 dice. Heads you win, tails you lose.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
it is *NOT* a perfectly cromulent word. The word is "Kwyjibo"
Embiggen your minds here, people
Comedian: "I just flew in from Chicago... and boy are my arms tired! hahaha"
TheCycoONE: "Given the average mass of a resident of Chicago, and comparing it to the minuscule amount of lift that could be generated from human arms, even with vigorous flapping motions, we can extrapolate the following formulas to show the improbability of this occurrence..."
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
It's worse than that. They don't even have to rationalize that it is the name of a person. They can just make up a short story right there on the spot, and name it with whatever random sting of characters they have, and they have now created a perfectly valid proper noun that is completely within the spirit of the new rules.
E.G.
Zxggrta: The story of a boy playing Scrabble
There once was a boy playing scrabble. He didn't have any real words in his tiles, so he decided to write a short story called "Zxggrta". Since he wrote the story, "Zxggrta" is now a valid word in Scrabble.
The End