Did Scrabble rules change?
Recently it was announced that the rules of Scrabble were changing, and players would in future be able to use proper nouns in the game, which has never been allowed before. The change would mean that previously-illegal proper nouns, including celebrity names, brands, and company names would be acceptable. The justification from game company Mattel was that they wanted to attract players from younger generations, and thought that allowing players to use names would achieve this end. I was a little bit unsure of how I felt about this, because I’m sure I’ve had occasions where I wanted to play a proper noun as my word, but there’s definitely a difference between playing ‘Vatican‘ and ‘Beyonce‘.
Just after I read this, I read another article that said that the rules would remain the same, and that the news of the rule change was an exaggeration of the truth, which is that Mattel is planning to release an entirely different game called Scrabble Trickster, where anything goes, including proper nouns and words spelled backwards. I’m not sure if this was just all a big marketing ploy, but I think a sigh of relief may have been heard throughout the Scrabble-playing world.
I’m also not sure if changing rules like this would justify an entirely new game. Surely you could just play different rules with the same equipment? Which reminds me of this cartoon, which made me giggle.
Does Scrabble matter to you?
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Adrian Morgan said,
April 21, 2010 @ 9:49 am
The usual practise would be to add a section to the rule sheet entitled “Variations”. But I’m sure that from Mattel’s point of view, marketting is its own justification.
I don’t know if I’ve ever played Scrabble as such. I’ve certainly played “Take Two”, which is a game that uses Scrabble tiles but not the Scrabble board. I think a lot of people play a game like that, and that far more people own a Scrabble board than play Scrabble.
Wendy said,
April 22, 2010 @ 7:20 am
I’ve never heard of that game! I’ve definitely played my share of Scrabble in my time, online and on boards. I just wish more people played more board games these days.
Adrian Morgan said,
May 1, 2010 @ 2:55 am
In Take Two, players start with a certain number of tiles each and race to create their own private crossword. Whenever someone uses up all their tiles, they yell “Take two!” and everyone, including the yeller, grabs two more tiles from the central repository. They must then incorporate these extra tiles into their private crossword, which may require just a few small modifications or may require starting over from scratch. The game continues as long as there are tiles left to grab.
I once had an idea for a table game for beginning language learners, but I expect the idea has a lot of problems in the details, among them the fact that it requires the luxury of a teacher who can make quick translations on demand.
Wendy said,
May 4, 2010 @ 4:52 am
Oh, interesting! The rules seem really familiar, but I don’t think I’ve ever played it.
I know what you mean about the details for games like that. It’s hard to keep track of everything, especially in bigger groups. I have a travel Scrabble game called Scramble, which uses dice and only one active word on the board at a time. It’s quite fun in small groups, and the letter dice were really handy for playing word games (say a word starting with the letter you roll, etc).
Adrian Morgan said,
May 4, 2010 @ 10:53 am
When I came up with my idea of a game for language learners a few years ago, I was taking a course at university that covered theories about language learning (using H. D. Brown, ‘Principles of Language Learning and Teaching’ as a textbook), and I tried to incorporate some of the ideas I was learning about.
In my idea, an object such as a photograph would be placed in the middle of the table to become the focus of discussion. Students would be rostered to choose the object of the day, because I thought that might aid motivation. Teacher and students would then sit around the table, and in turn, students would perform certain activities regarding production, translation and comprehension of phrases and sentences pertaining to the central object. The activity to be performed would be selected by some agreed mechanism, be it the roll of dice, by what the teacher feels the student is ready for, or some combination.
Activity #1 would be to produce a phrase/sentence in your own language, which the teacher would translate into the target language and write down on a card. (This would let students explore the target language like a detective by enquiring about sentences slightly beyond their current vocabulary and grammar.) Activity #2 would be to produce an original sentence in the target language, and write it down. (Again, giving students control over their own learning.) Activity #3 would be to pick one of the accumulated cards at random and translate its contents back into your own language. For all activities, details could be adjusted depending on the sophistication of the students and other factors.
I am not sure whether this idea (after fine-tuning) would have any potential as a language-learning tool, but I expect that it would be very limited. It would depend upon having a group of just the right size and a teacher who is proficient at instant translation. I also think it would be best suited to beginning students learning a language not too different from their own (say, another Indo-European language written in Roman characters). Altogether, a rather small niche.
Scrabble Word Finder said,
October 30, 2010 @ 1:06 am
There seems to be a few odd ideas like this being batted around in Scrabble’s marketing department, and I’m not sure it’s all that healthy for the game itself. Is there really any merit in allowing celebrity names etc? I’ll think I’ll stick with the original.