this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2023

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Scrabble’s New Official Word List Contains Dozens of Stunning Additions. Elite Players Are Mortified. (slate.com)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 121 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (8 children)

So the article explains that official tournaments use a unique words list that contains a lot of generous words like "zzz" and "aa". Mostly intended to allow high scoring words for people who studied their list.

The company that maintains the list has added a lot more of these "not a real word but it scores high so we added it" words.

For some highlight words from the article: MIREPOIXS, HORSEFEATHERSES, SUBSPECIESES, GRATINEEED

Players are complaining that high level tournaments are basically going to be competitions for who knows the most gibberish from the tournament word list and it is alienating the general population from joining tournaments and scrabble clubs.

[–] [email protected] 81 points 9 months ago (1 children)

MIREPOIXS, HORSEFEATHERSES, SUBSPECIESES, GRATINEEED

Did smeagol write this list?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

Truly, a win for mutant hobbits everywhere.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Shouldn't the official word list just be the dictionary? Isn't that the point?

[–] loudambiance 13 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (6 children)

Which dictionary? Merriam Webster added almost 700 "words" this year, including shit like: TTYL, finsta, bussin, cromulent, doggo, simp, goated, and more. I feel like they are slowly becoming urbandictionary.com.

[–] kakes 50 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I mean, their job is to provide definitions for the words people use in language, not to gatekeep what words are "good enough" to be defined.

I hear each of the words you've listed all the time, they're part of our language whether we like it or not.

[–] loudambiance 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

My point was more about which dictionary do you use and less about the exact words added. Webster added them, but Oxford and American Heritage didn't.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Use all of em and if it appears in any it's a word

[–] kakes 4 points 9 months ago

Now I want to play a game of scrabble where you play a complete nonsense word, and your points are the number of Google results for that word - lowest points wins. And maybe you have 5 letters instead of 7.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

I would rather be able to spell out bussin' for points than zzzz, aaa, or Mieropoix. At least it is a word people actually use in conversation.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Mirepoix is an ordinary word in cooking, but it’s an uncountable noun and they’re inventing a fake plural, like “featherses”.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

Didnt it specifically say horsefeatherses in one of those comments? I start drawing the line there.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago

Cromulent is a perfectly cromulent word.

[–] merc 6 points 9 months ago

Modern dictionaries are descriptive not prescriptive. They don't tell you how things should be spelled, or what meaning they should have. Instead, they report how things are spelled and what people think they mean in the real world.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 9 months ago

I'm pretty sure the tournaments are just memorising lists. A man won the French competition without being able to speak French... He just memorised the accepted words.

[–] merc 19 points 9 months ago

Words in scrabble should be things that people actually use outside scrabble. It's fair if that makes some leeway for slang. It's also fair if it means that some really obscure words that nobody really uses get in. But, this seems over the line because they're taking words that nobody uses, and tacking on un-grammatical endings.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (4 children)

I’m amazed that they allow Zzz. It’s not really a word.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I mean, compared to some of those other ones it's perfectly cromulent. At least it means something.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

It truly embiggens the spirit of the game.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

My horsie has featherses, silly hobbitses

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

The 10x number of new words added compared to previous editions, and the nonsensical nature of so many of the new entries, says it has to be AI. There's no way some of those would make it past a human editor (except one lazily accepting everything the AI suggests as truth).

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[–] [email protected] 64 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

I’m fine with adding slightly offensive words like ‘twat’ and ‘redneck’, but fake plurals like ‘feceses’ and ‘rouxes’ are absurd rules-lawyering.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 9 months ago (2 children)

They added "za" (slang for "pizza"), which is a strategy-breaking change.

It makes the letter "z" soooo much more powerful.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Wait hang on I've been using "za" for ages, was this not legal until now?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Arrest this man!

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

Spazzing for double points!

[–] [email protected] 37 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Well this is just a bunch of HORSEFEATHERSES

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

It would be like playing with Gollum.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago (4 children)

I vote games like scrabble don't use made up words just because they can give you big points. In that case why not just allow your players to place down all their letters in any random order and call it legal? It scores more points, so why not, Big Scrabble?

Also, I'm also personally against the use of made up slang words that started appearing around the 2010s and are now in common use, or at least were in common use.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I think the point is rather that all words are made up. For the record you have my vote as well. I don't want nonsense words to be a part of the game, especially at tournament level.

[–] kamenoko 6 points 9 months ago

If thou wishes for thine language to remain unchanged, perhaps ye wish to speak thusly?

[–] remus989 6 points 9 months ago

But all words are made up words.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

So the group re-added words such as SPAZ, GOY, REDNECK, GREYBEARD, and TWAT.

Great, he's back...

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Why would you ever remove twat? Twat is a great word, which I can only hear in Con O'Neill's voice from Our Flag Means Death.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Allegedly, it offends people.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The only people it offends are twats

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Well, there seems to be a lot of them...

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago

Well, my opinion that scrabble is one of the worst games ever made is now solidified.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago

Scrabble is dumb because it's all about memorizing high scoring words from a list. As I recall, the guy who won the French Scrabble championships never even knew how to speak French.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Never had this problem playing UpWords

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Is that like UpDog?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

What’s UpDog?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

No much, what up wit you?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Similar. It's a smaller board than scrabble and you can stack letters on top of existing.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

Haha I respect the responsible response. Sounds fun!

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

Some of these additions are just silliness. That said, I could barely make it through the article, as it kept just randomly starting a new sentence halfway through a thought.

It also referenced somebody, but then didn’t finish the sentence before moving on to talk about someone else. I have been annoyed by all the “this article was written by an ai” comments I’ve been seeing lately. Having read this article I see what people mean.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

I am stunned! Stunned, I say!

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