New Scrabble rules allow players to use any combination of letters as long as they roughly match non-verbal grunts or exhalations that can be made by players.
Original plans to allow “words” that at least have some basis in actual speech such as “Grrr” and “Wahh” have been abandoned as ‘too difficult’ by new Scrabble designers.
“We just want Scrabble to be open to everyone,” said Hasbro designer Rik Leighton.
“Previous incarnations of Scrabble have favoured people who can spell. Or talk. And that’s just unfair.”
The previous ban on acronyms or abbreviations has also been completely abandoned allowing such alleged words as “lolz” (lots of laugh out louds), “ridic” (ridiculous) and wtmfihttwoo (what the merry fuck is happening to this world of ours).
“It all started with the Australian edition,” explains Leighton.
“Initially we were very hardline and rejected all suggestions that half a word with an “o” at the end was legal or that a “dinkum” was actually a thing.”
“But after years and years of persistent; “Fair go, mate! She’ll be beaut. Give it a burl! Ripper!” we caved. And this is the inevitable result.
“Next year we plan to introduce Emoji. Those little picture things. May God have mercy on us all.”
And whilst these moves have provoked despair from anyone who can correctly use a semi-colon, 14 year-old Molly Haynes is enthusiastic about the development; “Its awesome funzizes. I played ‘nurrr’ against my Mum and she was all like ‘That’s not a word’ so I just went ‘Nurrr! Mum! Nurrr!’ so that settled that.”
“I also used my blank tile to spell “gr8”.
“At that point she had a stroke.”