back to article Scrabble friends Facebook, innit

Aficionados of Scrabble can as of right now deploy "Facebook", "blook", "wiki", "webzine" and "inbox" without fear of their opponent calling foul, following the incorporation of the terms into the list of Collins Official Scrabble Words. The first update to the Scrabblers' bible since 2007 includes 3,000 newly approved words …

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  1. Ian Ferguson
    Paris Hilton

    Wait...

    Surely not Facebook? It's the name of a product, capitalised and everything. I can understand 'facebooked' or 'twittering' but not 'Facebook'?

    1. Lockwood

      This

      I was going to say the same thing.

      To make it more marketable, Scrabble recently allowed proper nouns and I believe also stage names.

      I will be known as the Great Quizajax from now on.

      1. Graham Marsden

        @Lockwood

        "To make it more marketable, Scrabble recently allowed proper nouns and I believe also stage names."

        That was only a variant of Scrabble, not the official version of the game which uses the SOWPODS Scrabble Tournament word list http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOWPODS

    2. Tom Wood

      facebook is a verb, innit

      As you demonstrated yourself. If something can be "facebooked" then the act of facebooking something is to facebook it.

      It might sound awful now, but it's really not much different to hoovering the floor, tarmacing the road, sellotaping things together or photoshopping the evidence.

  2. Alpha Tony

    Meh

    'Aficionados of Scrabble can as of right now deploy "Facebook", "blook", "wiki", "webzine" and "inbox"

    Not if they're playing in my house they can't. I play the real rules : no names, no slang, no abbreviations and no American English. Any player whose word scores fewer points than the preceding one loses an item of clothing and drinks a shot.

    1. Graham Marsden
      Thumb Down

      @Alpha Tony

      "I play the real rules"

      No, you play a set of house rules that you've made up.

      1. LuMan
        Pint

        @ Graham

        Yeah, but his rules seem a whole lot better!

        I'm off to spell xerxes on a Triple Word Score!

    2. Marvin the Martian
      Troll

      Teh Rulez

      At our home we play by King James Rules; if the word was good enough for Jesus then it's good enuff for us.

      1. Graham Marsden
        Coat

        "if the word was good enough for Jesus"

        So is that ancient Aramaic or Latin you're using, then...?

  3. lglethal Silver badge
    Dead Vulture

    RIP The English Language

    Im no lingusitc purist but i think you will all agree that the deathknell of the language is being sounded when a word such as grrl makes it on to the official list for anything (well except maybe the official ist of words on a job application which call for automatic rejection).

    Tombstone icon, not for el reg but for our poor beloved language...

    1. Elmer Phud
      Headmaster

      Documentary about Scrabble

      A documentary about international Scrabble competitions showed how it was possible for people who can't speak English to win tournaments. They don't need to know the words, just that the collection of tiles is valid for the game.

      As such there is no 'deathknell' (death-knell?) as the language is not being used - only a collection of symbols that have may different ways they can be arranged, many of which are valid according to the rules of the game.

      'Our beloved language' is a mongrel anyway, a rag-tag collection of words from invaders or invadees that reflects the history of this septic isle.

      1. Turtle_Fan

        On linguistic purity

        An alternative reading of the situation would be that English has been so popular and successful that as more people use it more "contributions" (with or without the quotation marks) are made to it. I say celebrate it and be proud.

        I enjoy a beautifully authored piece as much as the next man, but language is a living, growing thing, not a snapshot of a standard frozen in time.

        Not to mention the huge advantage of being understood practically anywhere.

    2. Barney Carroll
      Boffin

      Re: RIP The English Language

      "Im no lingusitc purist"

      Yeh niether am i

    3. Graham Marsden
      Boffin

      @RIP The English Language

      Paging James D Nicholl: "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary."

      English constantly grows, adapts and changes. If you want a language that doesn't, try French which has laws to protect it (not that many people pay attention to them)

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Collins bullshit

    Anyone tries playing Scabble with one of those moronic "official" dictionaries will get it shoved up their bum at our house. It's the concise OED or nothing.

    The Collins "big book of silly words" is just a bad marketing joke.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "without fear of their opponent calling foul"

    How about a punch in the face? How does that work for you?

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Facebook

    It's like 'facepalm', but with a book instead of the palm.

  7. NightFox
    FAIL

    Frgythx (on a Triple Word)

    Just download the official iOS version by Electronic Arts, it uses completely made-up, random words all the time

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      Electronic Arts

      I have the iOS version. It's a joke. If the computer opponent picks up a blank tile, it will sit on it until the end of the game and be caught with it on its rack. Every single time.

      If EA let its slaves have the occasional evening off every few months, they might have a chance of blundering into the kind of intelligent algorithms that other programmers knew about twenty years ago.

  8. Version 1.0 Silver badge
    FAIL

    Not in competition

    The Official Word List (OWL) is the only acceptable list in virtually all Scrabble clubs in North America - it's the only list used in tournament Scrabble. SOWPODS is used elsewhere based on the Collins list but if Collins keeps acting like a cheap whore (acceptable in SOWPODS and OWL) then I see a good chance that the world Scrabble community will start to move towards OWL for competition.

    What you do at home is your own business but in public you'd better be using the correct wold list or else you're going to be challenged ... and you'll lose.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Go

      "and you'll lose."

      how terrible.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      North America

      Oh yes, North America, a country dedicated to not corrupting the English language.

    3. Vincent Ballard

      Elsewhere

      Elsewhere includes international competitions, so if you're really good then you'd better pay attention to changes to SOWPODS.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    hey grrrl u red my blook

    Come on guys it's just a game. Rules can make a game fun but they can also make it suck.

    You don't have to use the new wurds.

  10. Pen-y-gors

    an old fart writes...

    what the fec does 'blook' mean?

    1. Thomas 4

      Oh ffs

      Just wiki it.

  11. ThaMossop

    Gak

    Sounds like something Klingons eat

  12. Lamont Cranston
    Flame

    Surely, most Scrabble-based disputes

    can be resolved with reference to a dictionary (a paper one)? If it's not in the dictionary, it's not a word.

    The less said about Scrabble allowing proper nouns, the better.

  13. Ooo-wait-BUT!
    Joke

    official or not...

    my mummy still doesn't let me use c**t, even on a triple word score :o)

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