The Official Scrabble Player's Dictionary will be including over 5,000 new words in its latest edition which will be coming out on Aug. 11 from Merriam-Webster.
The announcement comes just a few days before 500 of the best Scrabble players in the world duke it out on Aug. 9 in Buffalo, New York at the national championships. The new words, however, won't be used officially in tournaments and clubs until Dec. 1.
"It makes the game more accessible to younger people, which we're always looking for. All the technology words make it more attractive to them," clinical psychologist and North American Scrabble Players Association champion Robin Pollock Daniel said of the update.
The Scrabble dictionary's current edition already lists over 100,000 words that players can use and the new ones will be adding around 40 more pages to it, including "quinzhee" which means a shelter made out of hollowed out snow. If played at the top row and ending at the right side through an existing "u," the word will get 401 points, plus a 50-point bonus for having used all seven tiles.
Merriam-Webster didn't release a list of all the new words that will be part of the fifth edition of the Scrabble dictionary but it did publish 30 words that will be included. Aside from quinzhee, some of those who made the cut include buzzkill, selfie, frenemy, mixtape, mojito, qigong, geocache, sudoku, bromance, hashtag and yozu.
To be included in the Scrabble word finder dictionary, a word must already exist in a standard dictionary. It must also not require capitalization nor be an abbreviation, as well as not have apostrophes or hyphens. Additionally, a word must be made of two to eight letters representing the seven tiles a player draws and the eighth that is already at play on the board which can be used for longer words to earn bonus points.
The fourth edition of the Scrabble dictionary was released almost a decade ago so it was due for a refresh, which the 5,000 words will surely provide.
"It is going to be a big step for a lot of people to switch to this but at the same time if you're sitting at a Scrabble game after dinner and somebody plays the word selfie and somebody challenges that as not a real word, well guess what? It is," mused Peter Sokolowski, editor at large for Merriam Webster.
