Scrabble Needs a New Scoring System

innocent_white_lamb writes "A researcher says that some letters are over valued and some are under-valued in Scrabble, due to recent changes to the lists of allowable words. Z and X are now much easier to play and should be worth less, while U, M and G should be worth more than they are now. Joshua Lewis wrote a program to re-calculate the value of each letter to better reflect the current usage. The co-president of the North American Scrabble Players Association says that he often hears criticism of Scrabble's scoring system, but any change would bring about 'catastrophic outrage'. A spokesman for Mattel says that they have no plans to change the game."

Comments

It doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a game, the iportant thing is that everyone is playing by the same rules. Sure, if you were to develop scrabble today, it might be nice to adjust the values of the letters to reduce the element of chance in the game, but now there is insufficient reason to go and change it. It woudl still have been ok if every letter had the same value.

See these letters as 'bonus' and 'penalty'

[G3ckoG33k]

Many games have these, 'bonus' and 'penalty', and Scrabble appears to be one of them.

It is part of the game and Mattel has no reason to change their rules.

It's a game

[Overzeetop]

If you don't like it, go get yourself some wood putty and a sharpie and make the letters whatever value you damned well please.