How do you score when one uses the words "selfie," "photobomb," "emoji," or "bling" in Scrabble? Maybe the generation of technology junkies will not have disagreements but generation gaps between players can spell long arguments.
Hasbro has announced on Wednesday that it wants "word peace" on its popular board game and will update its official dictionary of playable words. The last update to the "Merriam-Webster Official Scrabble" dictionary was last revised in 2005 and the company wants to catch up.
The company will not impose its will and add its own list of acceptable words on Scrabble but calls on fans of the game to contribute.
"One word can change everything. We're updating the Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online Official Scrabble Players Dictionary for the first time in 9 years with the#ScrabbleWordShowdown! Nominate your word in the COMMENTS below until March 28th! The power is in YOUR hands...," the company announced on its official Hasbro Game Night Facebook Page.
However, fans thinking of adding a few pages to the dictionary might not like the mechanics of the call for submissions. While Scrabble will be accepting word nominations through Facebook, the company in collaboration with Merriam-Webster will trim down the suggestions to a list of 16 that will be included in the Scrabble Word Showdown. Fans will be voting for their favorite words until the only one word remains.
The chosen word will be announced on April 10. It will not take a selfie with the other nominated new words but will be included in the newest edition of the Official Scrabble Players' Dictionary that will be released in August.
"The Scrabble Word Showdown will let fans nominate and vote on words that are fun and relevant for today's players. We are excited to see which word rises to the top and makes its way into The Official SCRABBLE Players Dictionary," said Hasbro vice president of marketing Jonathan Berkowitz.
So far, there have been interesting submissions such as "texting," "ew," "zen," "emo," and "craycray."
For those who might know, Alfred Mosher Butts invented the game inspired by crosswords and anagrams, plus the desire to create a board game where chance will be a big factor. Butts, an architect who lived during the Great Depression, studied the pages of the New York Times and did the math on the probabilities of consonants and vowels appearing in the English language.
Butts first called the game as Criss-Cross Words and later on collaborated with a friend named James Brunot to tweak the rules and the game. It was renamed Scrabble, which was trademarked by the inventor in 1948.
