Modern Scrabble: Should It Be Updated?
Thursday January 3, 2008
According to the The Sunday Telegraph:
British players of the lexicographical board game are caught up in an unseemly row over whether to allow words used in mobile telephone text messages. Modernizers claim that shortened text phrases such as ttfn (ta ta for now), cuthen (see you, then), and fwiw (for what it's worth), should be included in Official Scrabble Words. They think that this would encourage young people to play.
Traditionalists, however, are furious with the suggestion. They claim that to allow a mixture of distorted English and abbreviations would bring Britain's favourite board game into disrepute. What's your take?
Poll: Should words used in mobile telephone text messaging or chatspeak be allowed in Scrabble? IMHO
Comments
No way! It’s bad enough that the Scrabble dictionary I have isn’t even written by a native English speaker, and there are already allowable words derived from other languages that are truly non-Enlgish words. Acronyms are not words, and their use should remain illegal (especially in tournament Scrabble).
Making up games with compromised rules can be fun at the family table though. For instance, a game of “verbs only” or “potty words only” creates an interesting challenge and a ton of laughs. I feel it would be more suitable for Scrabble to include a list of compromised game ideas such as these in the instructions, rather than allow acronyms altogether.