Scrabble Rant

Allow me a moment for a slight rant. I love Scrabble. It's my favorite board game. I don't get to play against people very often. Sadly, nobody in my family will play with me. My nephew claims it's humiliating to always get his ass kicked. I'm a little surprised at that 'tude. I've tried to teach them defensive strategies and share other tips. It's not like I did a Scrabble end zone dance that time that I cleared my rack over a Triple Word space, made three new words and scored 90 points in a single turn.

Nobody seems to believe me when I say that success all depends on the letters you happen to have in your rack.

The Scrabble App was the first one I bought for my iPhone. It's a great way to wake up my brain or kill time in a doctor's waiting room or any other place where time needs killin'. I play against the computer in the game. I've noticed something strange in the words that the game accepts. I'm old school Scrabble where you don't use proper names or any word that begins with a capital letter. Imagine my surprise when the computer put down Zaire. I did a quick Google search online and found out that in April of this year one of the game's licensors changed the rules to allow some proper names. (Hasbro has the rights in some countries; Mattel has the rights in others. The App version is by Hasbro.)

Fooey on that, I say, particularly if I can place the F on a Triple Letter space and the Y on a Double Word, thus scoring 38 points. I'd never do that if playing against people on an actual board. However, if the computer can do it, then I am forced to play by its rules.

So, last night I logged on for a quick game. We progressed and I spotted the opportunity to build on the computer's word GRAM to make MONDAY and earn a Triple Word. This message popped up: This word is not in the dictionary. Please try again.

What the hell? It's a day of the week. How can Monday not be in the Scrabble dictionary?? On the off chance that alien parasites had invaded my brain and destroyed the spelling sector, I called a friend.

"Spell Monday for me," I said. Dead silence ensued while she tried to reason out whether this was a trick question or the set-up for a joke.

"Huh?"

"How do you spell Monday?"

More silence, then a tentative, "As in the Monday that's the day of the week?"

"Yes. THAT Monday."

She complied. Assured that my spelling acumen had not vanished I told her why I wanted confirmation. We agreed that the game was screwed up.

I then checked the minimal rules included with the App. They say that some "offensive or obscure words have been eliminated from the game". Granted, a lot of people don't cartwheel with glee when Monday rolls around, but it's hardly an offensive word.

Obscure? This game allows za (slang for pizza), qi (variant of chi) and qat (variant of khat, an Arabic shrub), but not Monday??

I'm not sure whether to write to Hasbro or EA, but someone needs to fix this problem. It's more than a Scrabble fan and confirmed logophile can stand!