March 13: Scrabble

My husband and I were inspired to play a delightful game of Scrabble last night after listening to radio. During "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me", we learned that Scrabble has officially banned a bunch of words. I looked into this fact, and apparently they've been banning words for years! Most recently, a total of 236 words were removed from the official Scrabble word list used at tournaments  The ones mentioned on the radio were "fart", "boobie", and "arse" but there are many many more. A few I totally agree with because they are blatantly racist or derogatory, but most of them I totally do NOT agree with. It took me awhile to find the actual list of these banned words. On the official Scrabble website, they have rearranged the letters of the words on the list in order to "obfuscate" them, which is super frustrating. Finally I found a non-obfuscated list via the Seattle Scrabble Club. And it is super fascinating to read. A very specific ruling is that is even if a word has a derogatory meaning, as long as it also has a non-derogatory meaning, it is allowed.  Here are some interesting examples:

Boobie is banned, but boobies is okay (because they are birds; singular is booby, not boobie)

Cumming is banned, but cum is okay (because it means together or with)

Coloreds is banned, but colored is okay (because it's a totally basic word meaning to have or give color)

Dicked and dicking are banned, but dick and dicks are okay (because apparently dick means detective?)

Hos is banned, but ho is okay (because it is a word used to express surprise)

Peed and peeing are banned, but pee and pees are okay (because "pee" is the word for the letter "p")

Tomming is banned (I had never heard of this word, but apparently it means "[of a black person] behave in an excessively obedient or servile way" but tom and toms are okay (because a tom is a male of various animals, especially a male cat or turkey.)

With very few exceptions (coloreds and tomming being two of them, the n-word being another), my husband and I do not agree with the banning of words of Scrabble, and our official house rules will allow pretty much every word in the dictionary. But I am excited now to create a Jeo-Party category about banned Scrabble words, and because there are so many, it will likely appear in many games. 

For the record, my husband won last night, 299-296. One of the very rare games where we did not break 300 (though we were super close). I am so happy that I have a partner who is my equal at competitions and games. It makes it delightful to play games with him.

With delight,

♥Jamie