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.

Re:Minor correction

[0xdeadbeef]

Scrabble, now for stupid people!

Re:memorizing alphabetized letter lists

[LordLimecat]

A good house rule we use is you must be able to define and/or use the word in a sentence. If we then look the questionable word up, even if it is in the dictionary, it may be denied if your definition was way off.

Re:memorizing alphabetized letter lists

[stonewallred]

actually you want to memorize 6 letter stems, then go to five and 4 letter stems if you want to be competitive. bingos win games, and even the best players have trouble locking a board up against equally skilled players. but strategy will almost always beat word knowledge. I play against people on-line and in RL who use either an electronic scrabble dictionary (franklin mint edition from way back) or websites. And unless they have a bunch of time it still does not help them win. You only have 25 minutes before you start getting hit with a 10 pt per minute or fraction of a minute penalty in tournament rules. I love beating the idiots who use websites, because they nerdrage and accuse me of cheating when they are the ones cheating and losing.

Re:Dumbing things down

[hoggoth]

wtf? declaring AFTER you see the dice results?

We go one better. We allow an infinite level of 'undo's on any move. After an attack, either player can decide that attack or even the entire turn didn't count and the board is rolled back to a previous state. The benefit of this is we play really sharp games with few sub-optimal moves. The downside is we've never yet finished a game.

Re:Acronyms

[robot256]

NASA-speak frequently involves sentences consisting entirely of articles, prepositions, and acronyms. Half our "words" turn out to be backronyms, and some nested acronyms (acronyms for strings of acronyms) are easily four or five levels deep.

Re:Hasbro and Mattel

[Anonymous Coward]

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.
 
Psst! When you next play Trivial pursuit, stay away from "Geography". Mexicans are North Americans too.
 
Well, you *almost* got it right. Maybe you only lived in the U.S. until you were 5.

Re:House Rules

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is "vee" a word? The same reason "green" is. Sure, you could just put V and let the reader figure out that you are refering to the letter, just as you could put a swatch of green paint on the page. However, we've generally decided it's easier to have names for these things (especially when speaking), and names are words. I can't believe you fail to use the names of the letters of our alphabet quite often (try reading unpronounceable acronyms without them).

Re:House Rules

[Anonymous Coward]

4. No abbreviations! No to "amp", "ref", "ex", etc. Or while we are at it, "etc" itself.

Or '(omni)bus', 'p(e)ram(bulator)', 'piano(forte)', 'stereo(phonic)', (in)flu(enza)' , 'radio(gram)', '(poly)vinyl, ?

I'm not saying that you're not free to make up any rules you want, but they need to be able to be applied objectively (or objectively enough for everyone to agree). I prefer 'is it in this big book that lists lots of words'. (Although maybe I need to play with more agreeable people).