Scrabble Now Allows Names

cool.

Given that there is no restriction, legal or otherwise on what you name children, much less things like boats, this ruling makes anything you put on the board admissible. I hereby christen my new boat ZYQXYJ. But honestly most serious scrabble players that I know tend to play US tournament rules anyway which differ from those that have been printed on the box for years.

This is a sign that Scrabble is having its clock cleaned by competitors removing the more draconian rule sets. All it can do is join them.

Scrabulous had a better online app than scrabble did, and others doing electonic knockoffs still do it better.

Then, simpler, lower hassle (easier to carry around, share and score) variations on the concept are doing terribly well. Bananagrams is the fun part of making words with much easier means of scoring. Gone are the prescriptivist rules and bean counting; in comes the creativity and fun.

So, it is probably a good move, and necessary, that Scrabble 'allows' probably the most irritating stricture on gameplay, that of allowing proper Names, which often themselves, have become generic nouns.

Of course, the way some people spell names these days, you might wish that rule was still in place.

I just heard this on CBC, too. Confused...

We always played by our own rules anyway, we're not purists.

Our house rules are that anything is acceptable so long as it sounds like an actual word, and your explanation is sufficiently entertaining and/or convincing.

Basically the other players agree on whether or not you've adequately entertained them while making your case for a non-word. It makes for some creative and animated storytelling.

I think we had a point deduction for words not in the dictionary, but it's been a while since we played anyway.