Attention scrabble players! Mattel, the company that produces the popular game, is changing the rules. It’s allowing you to score points by spelling out proper nouns.
A spokesperson told the BBC it will add a new dimension to the game by allowing an element of pop culture, which could attract a new, younger generation of players.
“This could cause a power shift between the generations, with those possessing a keen knowledge of the top 40 singles’ chart legitimately able to cite such high-scoring examples as singers N-Dubz (17 points) and Jay-Z (23 points),” the spokeswoman told the BBC.
Ariane Sherine at The Guardian:
That’s right: Sugababes, Toyota and Clearasil could soon be coming to a Scrabble board near you, if you’re the kind of deviant who embraces expedient marketing decisions. Throw out the dictionary! Replace it with Heat magazine! Why confine yourself to the mere 171,476 words in the OED?
“We believe that people who are already fans of the game will enjoy the changes,” fibbed a Mattel spokesperson, fully aware of the wrath and welcome publicity that would ensue. “They will also enable younger players and families to get involved.” Are these demographics allergic to uncapitalised words? Are they so in thrall to brands that they need to incorporate them into every second of their leisure time?
But why stop at proper nouns? Surely foreign words should no longer be verboten? If new Scrabble better accommodates the young, just imagine how Euro Scrabble could improve relations avec nos continental neighbours. Txtspk Scrabble would be next, in all languages including Esperanto, swiftly followed by Creative Scrabble, where you make up your own words. Dissent will not be tolerated: innovation can only advance our development, never hinder it. Those of us who claim to prefer the lexical beauty and simplicity of classic Scrabble clearly fear change, and are standing stubbornly in the way of progress.
Andrew Swift at Foreign Policy:
Finally my dream of using “Reykjavik” (30 base points), “Kyrgyzstan” (30 base points), and countless others (readers, feel free to chime in your favorites) has finally been realized. (Anticipate long arguments over the spelling of “Qaddafi.”)
Purists take heart, the classic version will still be available — but I won’t be playing with you.
(Note: there is only one “Z” available for play, but using a blank tile would still give a base score of 24 points for former-President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor.)
**Update: It appears the new version will not be sold in North America, where Hasbro owns the rights to the game (Mattel owns the rights to Scrabble elsewhere in the world.) Perhaps someone should just make my dream come true, and create a (solely) international relations Scrabble edition?
Robert Quigley at Geekosystem:
I’m a fairly serious competitive Scrabble player (no, really), which is why I was seriously freaked out to read this morning that Mattel was changing the rules of the game for the first time in 62 years to allow proper nouns like “Jay-Z” and “Shakira” as playable words. The story has been enthusiastically picked up by British media outlets, including The Telegraph, the Daily Mail, and BBC News.
This would be a nightmare for a number of reasons, not least of which would be deciding which nouns are “proper”: Which brands, celebrities, and acronyms are “big” enough that they warrant dictionary entries? Does “TomKat,” for Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’ annoyingly portmanteaued relationship, work? Is “Bennifer” still valid even though Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez have since broken up? All of which raises another point: Scrabble as we know it would become really dumb.
Fortunately, we got in touch with a Mattel rep, and he confirmed that the rumors of a Scrabble rule change making the rounds in the British press are wildly overblown.
Philip Nelkon, a representative for Mattel and a legendary Scrabble player in his own right, told us that the proposed rule changes applied to a family-oriented new variant on the game, but that classic Scrabble would continue to exist as it currently does, with no changes to the rules or the dictionary.
[The British press] refers to a new edition of the classic game that introduces new twists on the classic rules. One of the new rules includes the opportunity for players to play proper nouns and there are others included such as playing a word backwards or stealing opponent’s tiles, introducing new dimensions of play. The new rules provide a great new opportunity for families to get involved in word play.
The new game will appear later in the year, the classic game will still be available and will not change.
Interestingly, despite all of the “outrage!” stories popping up about the largely made-up Scrabble rule change, some of the more photographically-memoried expert-level Scrabble players might actually welcome such a change, as it would give them more words to memorize and thus more tools with which to trounce their competition: With an expanded dictionary, there would be an expanded number of better optimum plays in many positions.
Jared Newman at Technologizer:
Here’s where technology comes in: Scrabble, or games like it, have become quite popular on computers and mobile devices. Scrabulous was one of the most popular games on Facebook before it was suspended amidst lawsuits from Hasbro and Mattel (the game eventually came back as Lexulous). One of my favorite iPhone apps is Words With Friends, another Scrabble clone that lets you play remotely with friends at your leisure, and it’s at least popular enough to have its own fan site.
So I reject the notion that Mattel needs to bend the rules in order to attract more players. The players are there, it’s just that Mattel hasn’t been able to capture them itself.
My hope is that Mattel’s rule change doesn’t creep into any online versions of Scrabble. Enforcing the proper use of proper nouns online would be difficult, and a computer-made set of rules would make it impossible for players to debate which words qualify and which are clearly made up.
Dave Levy at Mediaite:
I was being mildly generous with the laws of random chance related to tiles while steering clear of multipliers for scoring; I did observe some of the major rules of letter distribution from the English version as best as possible, though. This last rule has me heartbroken: With only 1 z in the standard, 100-tile game, there’s no way you could end up with a pocket of ZZEINEB and turn “SKI” into Brzezinski (which would be a savage 152 point play on a triple-word score if it was humanly possible). There is still a lot more out there though, so let’s get this going.
Cable News Division
Mika Brzezinski may be out thanks to one too many Zs, but that doesn’t mean her other Morning Joe counterparts couldn’t help you out. With high letter frequency, GEIST could be a nice early play. Carrying a hand of OORSUHG and you could turn the measly four-letter CARB into a bingo driven SCARBOROUGH. Willie will only get you 6 points, but Morning Joe himself could be good for a minimum of 69 without multipliers, which would be tough to avoid on a word that long.
= 6
= 69 (with Bingo)
Let’s stay on the 24-hour nets for our next one: picking between Glenn Beck and Rachel Maddow? The Scrabble board says the MSNBC host is going to slightly more productive for your scoring needs, but as Beck would point out, you’d have to get more handouts from the bank after you play Rachel’s name for only one additional point. And he just doesn’t understand why he’s the only one pointing that out.
= 13
= 12
Late Night TV Division
Team Leno or Team Conan? The math says that Conan will get you a slight advantage, especially in the 18-34 demographic. However, massively appropriately, David Letterman takes care of both them quite easily in the game of Scrabble. If LET or MAN are on the board, it won’t take significant luck to get the tiles you need to make a quick strike on your opponent.
= 4
= 7
= 11
Bad Pop Culture Reference Section
Some great news for everyone who got a chance to read Rachel Sklar’s excellent breakdown of the Release the Kraken meme: ZEUS beats BIEBER in the Scrabble test. If that’s not good news from the universe, I don’t know what is.
= 13
= 10
dd
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