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Scrabble Does Not Need to be Made More ‘Inclusive’

by Jack Watson
15 April 2024 6:00 PM

I am a fan of Scrabble, the word game in which two to four players compete to score points by placing tiles to form words, each containing a score and a letter, onto a 15 x 15 board of squares. Some of the squares have numbers on them that either double or triple your word or letter score. I play it regularly with my grandparents on the weekends. It’s great fun and never results in a family argument. However, disappointingly, it has become the latest – and probably not the last thing – to go woke by introducing another version of the game, which is more inclusive and not competitive. This is the first time it has been changed in 75 years.

Scrabble Together, created by American multinational toy manufacturing and entertainment company Mattel (who brought us the Barbie movie), is the new ‘updated’ version of the traditional word game. It has been designed to be more collaborative and accessible for those who find word games or the concept of competing intimidating – primarily members of Generation Z. Here is what Ray Adler, vice-president of Mattel, had to say about their new creation:

Scrabble has truly stood the test of time as one of the most popular board games in history, and we want to ensure the game continues to be inclusive for all players. For anyone who’s ever thought ‘word games aren’t for me’, or felt a little intimidated by the classic game, Scrabble Together mode is an ideal option.

The new board is double-sided with the original version of the game on one side and the updated version on the other. The instructions for the game say that in lieu of scoring points, which is the point of the traditional game, players play in teams and work together to win goal cards, which set the players challenges, such as making a word containing three different consonants or vowels. There is no time pressure and the game ends when a team completes 20 goal cards or when a team cannot complete a goal card. So, in addition to not having to create words from scratch or competing to do so, the new game does not require players to add up a column of numbers. Presumably, this is designed to accommodates people who are innumerate as well as illiterate.

This change was apparently stimulated by the popular online word game Wordle (of which I am also an avid player), which was purchased by the New York Times in 2022, where users have to guess a five-letter word every day. However, this change is unnecessary. Why create something intended to be challenging and competitive in the first place and then attenuate it because some people find it difficult to play? Simply, just do not play it and let other fans enjoy it. Scrabble has a 4.7/5 rating on Google, with 150 million sets sold worldwide, which you can buy in 121 countries in 30 different languages. Did it really need ‘updating’?

This is not the first time Mattel has been accused of making Scrabble woke: in 2022, it decided to ban over 400 words in the official score list, including words that may be ‘offensive’, ‘racial slurs’ and ‘sexuality and gender insults’. This was an attempt to make the game more inclusive, but it just resulted in scores of players quitting the game and accusing the manufacturer of virtue signalling. Naturally, ‘woke’ is an acceptable Scrabble word. Nevertheless, despite this unwelcome change, at least Mattel didn’t change the fundamental nature of the game.

It’s a shame to see a brilliant and original game, which was first made in 1938, going woke. That said, they are not taking away the original version which, I imagine, most people will continue to play.

Jack Watson is a 15 year-old school boy and Scrabble fan. He has a blog about supporting Hull City Football Club here.

Tags: Board GamesMattelScrabbleScrabble Together

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13 Comments
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Splatt
Splatt
3 years ago

That’s a bad sign.
Extending furlough means extending restrictions is on the cards.

111
0
paul smith
paul smith
3 years ago
Reply to  Splatt

And one more step towards the adoption of UBI.

68
0
Milo
Milo
3 years ago
Reply to  paul smith

yes – you couldn’t do it all in one go

23
0
Julian
Julian
3 years ago
Reply to  paul smith

All those “conspiracy theorists” who were on about UBI at the start look righter and righter all the time.

86
0
smithey
smithey
3 years ago
Reply to  Julian

Most of the conspiracy theories from the start have either come to pass or are looking very likely to – compulsory vaccines, vaccine passports, the end of paper money, inflation and rising prices, ongoing lockdowns, UBI to name just a few

66
0
Woden
Woden
3 years ago
Reply to  smithey

Good old Ickey!

12
0
Hester
Hester
3 years ago
Reply to  paul smith

Communism in all but use of the word.

17
0
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
3 years ago
Reply to  Hester

Credit communism. It’s inevitable when so called central banks are really committees that set the price of debt and thus prices for the economy, a hallmark of marxist lunacy.

Last edited 3 years ago by TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
2
0
Julian
Julian
3 years ago
Reply to  Splatt

“On the cards” Lol. Only a loony would ever have expected all restrictions to be lifted on 21st June, never to return, and the government have already been pretty clear that Track and Trace and travel restrictions will continue for the foreseeable future, and of course the vaccine program with boosters and new vaccines for variants will grind on for decades. Some restrictions may be lifted in June but to think that the coronamadness will be over then is simply fanciful. It’s the new normal.

59
-1
Splatt
Splatt
3 years ago
Reply to  Julian

No. Its not “normal”.
“New normal” isnt a thing. Its abnormal.

Stop accepting it.

77
0
Julian
Julian
3 years ago
Reply to  Splatt

I will never accept it as long as I live, and will never give up trying to convince people of the truth, but we need to recognise where we are which is that the insane narrative continues to dominate

73
0
Dobba
Dobba
3 years ago
Reply to  Julian

Good man. Stay strong with integrity. Totally with you on that one. ✊

28
0
Hugh
Hugh
3 years ago
Reply to  Splatt

the “new normal” TM

0
0
marebobowl
marebobowl
3 years ago
Reply to  Julian

USA completely open, internal flights busier than ever. Mental illness will take over in little Britain. It looks like it already has in the gov’t and it’s advisors.

9
0
Woden
Woden
3 years ago
Reply to  Splatt

The picture at the beginning of this item makes me want to vomit….please, not again!

21
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chris c
chris c
3 years ago
Reply to  Woden

He looks like he’s still in school

2
0
CGL
CGL
3 years ago

FURLOUGH = LOCKDOWN

70
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thefoostybadger
thefoostybadger
3 years ago
Reply to  CGL

Furlough= bribing idiots not to think to hard about all the bad stuff that’s coming their way.

Paying people to do nothing; all part of training the sheep to abdicate responsibility for their own lives to the state.

Which is the opposite of what we should be doing; open up, get people working again to regain a sense of normality, (traditional, not “new”), and let the anxious see that there is nothing to fear and everything to gain from having close contact with their fellow man.

73
0
MizakeTheMizan
MizakeTheMizan
3 years ago

We all know UBI was the plan from the start, why not just admit it?

35
0
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
3 years ago
Reply to  MizakeTheMizan

unearned money will not be spent wisely and will quickly work it’s way to those title holders.

0
0
1984imminent
1984imminent
3 years ago

This is appalling news. It’s their usual, predictable strategy of “leak it to the press” to see how the public responds. Get angry. Lockdown must STOP, and never happen again.

72
0
Jo Starlin
Jo Starlin
3 years ago

Gove is a snake, utterly appalling creature.

98
0
adamino
adamino
3 years ago
Reply to  Jo Starlin

When this rot is allowed to continue, you know that good can no longer prevail…

10
0
Catee
Catee
3 years ago

I suggest if Sturgeon wants furlough extended the the scottish ministration can pay for it. Sucking at the English teat is becoming very tiresome.

64
0
Hopeless
Hopeless
3 years ago
Reply to  Catee

She certainly has a brass neck, covered with a tartan scarf. I thought her idea is for a Caledonian Utopia, pap-fed as an EU subordinate state, wholly free of the nasty English and their money. Hypocrisy.

12
0
RickH
RickH
3 years ago

Inevitable. They couldn’t work the scam without bribery.

But don’t blame the punters – it’s the simple profit motive : a reward/effort equation.

23
0
Julian
Julian
3 years ago
Reply to  RickH

I know people who liked furlough and others that hated it

4
0
RickH
RickH
3 years ago
Reply to  Julian

Yes, so do I. And to be fair, most people I know have work itself as part of the reward side of the equation. Only sad misanthropes with their own problems tend to attribute furlough generally as being driven from bottom up.

Put Fear+Reward for submission together, tho’, and you have a powerful self-reinforcing psychological combination.

11
0
bringbacksanity
bringbacksanity
3 years ago

Build Back Better. Oddly I’ve a sense I heard that before.

How come I am not a penny better off from their Build Back Better scheme and we are thousands of pounds worse off ? Gove’s clearly been snorting the white coco powder in Islington again.

Last edited 3 years ago by bringbacksanity
40
0
Splatt
Splatt
3 years ago
Reply to  bringbacksanity

Most people will be tens of thousands of pounds worse off with “build back better” once his green nonsense kicks in fully.

29
0
Dobba
Dobba
3 years ago
Reply to  bringbacksanity

Build Back Better for the few, not the many.

31
0
Moist Von Lipwig
Moist Von Lipwig
3 years ago
Reply to  bringbacksanity

Michael Gove snorted coke and the fizzy bubbles went right up his nose.

4
0
prod_squadron
prod_squadron
3 years ago
Reply to  bringbacksanity

Long Cocaine.

5
0
peyrole
peyrole
3 years ago

They should just call it what it is, UBI and have done with lying.
‘Build back better’, ah there was me thinking this was ‘the green deal’; you know all those heat pumps to replace gas boilers etc. Well unfortunately for the UK government ( and most others) the German government has just put a rather large spoke in that wheel.
Their report ( linked below in English) on dangers to health from water supplies contaminated by the acid coming from heat pumps , and their call to stop installing them, may lead to more life yet from the old gas boiler.
https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/press/pressinformation/trifluoroacetic-acid-from-fluorinated-refrigerants

35
0
binarygeoff
binarygeoff
3 years ago

Every penny these lunatics throw down the toilet serves only to reduce the value of money for everyone. Don’t any of these people realise what they are doing? With what has been spent already we will be lucky to avoid prices doubling within a matter of months and unlike with progressive inflation the level of wages will not even remotely keep pace with the price rises. Hyper inflation is particularly nasty for those at the lower end of the food chain who will undoubtedly find themselves on or below the bread line.
 
Undoubtedly there will be calls for so called “green taxes” to try and make up some of the balance which will of course hurt those at the lower end of the spectrum the most.

30
0
LMS2
LMS2
3 years ago
Reply to  binarygeoff

Printing money works until suddenly it doesn’t, and the proverbial hits the fan and everyone’s pockets.

5
0
HelenaHancart
HelenaHancart
3 years ago

“On the cards”? It was ALWAYS the bloody plan! UBI anyone?

24
0
richardw53
richardw53
3 years ago

Gove’s only hope of advancement lies in technocracy, not democracy. Little wonder that he’s trying to hurry it along.

21
0
Woden
Woden
3 years ago
Reply to  richardw53

I am at present wearing a t – shirt proclaiming ‘ Resist Technocracy’

8
0
Hopeless
Hopeless
3 years ago

After a long gap, I have been re-reading the memoirs of the German WW2 general Guderian. After he and other generals were dismissed by Hitler, he wrote:-

“The result of the ill-feeling thus engendered was the law passed by the Reichstag on April 26th, 1942, which removed the last checks to totalitarian authority in the legislative, executive and judicial spheres. This law (which granted Hitler the right to change law by decree without discussion by the Reichstag) marked the culmination of a long process which had begun with the unfortunate Authorisation Act of March 23rd, 1933; the German dictator was now given complete despotic power. Germany had thus ceased to be a modern state whose structure was based on the rule of law.”

That was happening in Germany 79 years ago, and I never thought, when I first read that passage almost forty years ago, that I would, in 2021, be living in a country which now so closely resembles the Third Reich.

58
-1
Sceptical Steve
Sceptical Steve
3 years ago
Reply to  Hopeless

Indeed. By 1942, many Germans had already experienced living in a dictatorship under the Kaiser, so it wasn’t too difficult for Hitler to assume the role. In contrast, the supine attitude of the British people to what has been coming their way over the past 30 or so years has been quite nauseating. Bread and circuses, anyone?

Last edited 3 years ago by Sceptical Steve
28
0
LMS2
LMS2
3 years ago
Reply to  Hopeless

And the unvaccinated become the new Jews, a target to blame for government policy of continued restrictions.
We can point to Florida as an example of no restrictions, no masks, no coerced vaccinations, but it won’t make any difference. People become illogical and fanatical.

22
0
I am Spartacas
I am Spartacas
3 years ago

We mustn’t weaken on ensuring that our freedoms are returned in full, we must not become complacent simply because we are closer to the day when our glorious leader Alexander Johnson has promised to grant us (some) of our freedoms back on the 21st June – if he took our freedoms away once he can just as easily take them away again … and he will – so we must send a powerful message to this government that its penchant for totalitarianism will not be tolerated again.

I’m going to be there – hope you can make it too …

mon14.jpg
Last edited 3 years ago by Ember von Drake-Dale 22
40
0
Cecil B
Cecil B
3 years ago

They will wait until he end of the summer rioting season before they sack 5m+

10
0
Moist Von Lipwig
Moist Von Lipwig
3 years ago

Mengele Gove should be fired, he is totalitarian scum,

26
0
Jane G
Jane G
3 years ago

He will fund this but not a decent catch-up programme for schoolchildren.
Priorities -pah!

2
0
Sandra Barwick
Sandra Barwick
3 years ago
Reply to  Jane G

The only thing they need to catch up with is normality.

3
0
yohodi
yohodi
3 years ago

More FUD…

2
0
Hester
Hester
3 years ago

Has any real journalist asked the minister what build back better means

12
0
LMS2
LMS2
3 years ago
Reply to  Hester

They could ask, but I doubt they’d get a sensible answer.

2
0
Lucan Grey
Lucan Grey
3 years ago
Reply to  Hester

It means a teacher in every classroom.

0
0
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
3 years ago
Reply to  Hester

The establishment took a financial hit with Brexit raising wages for the average worker and their rents falling so this is more taxpayers money for them.

0
0
sjonesy1999
sjonesy1999
3 years ago

Gove is another in a long line of annoying, bent finger pointing fucktards I would never tire of kicking.

15
0
mm99
mm99
3 years ago

Time for violence.

9
-1
Hester
Hester
3 years ago

What the F does build back better even mean? Whose version of better? better for whom? how will this better look? what does that mean for the average joe in the street?
Why do the MSM allow these people to come out with these little slogans without asking them to define what that means.
Plus Gove has clearly been briefed by psyops to keep the alarm level up in the Public by the indication that Furlough extension means Lockdown coming back thus the sadistic game of continuing the terror on the British Public.

18
0
stewart
stewart
3 years ago

It’s the new way of doing politics, creeping towards things that people would never accept but for the fact that they were gradually and relentlessly nudged there.

Zero-covid + closed borders. Started months ago, almost there.

UBI, slowly making a sizeable chunk of the population unemployable and addicted to state support.

Vaccine passports, government still having to play hot and cold with it, but will definitely be introduced for travel and when people get used to that, they’ll extend it to everyday life.

13
0
Moist Von Lipwig
Moist Von Lipwig
3 years ago

Of course it would be Mengele Gove spouting this rubbish, he would tell you, with a straight face, that Manchester United play their home games in Eindhoven, wearing black and white stripes.

4
0
Bill Hickling
Bill Hickling
3 years ago

Eff off Gove. You want to control us into the foreseeable.

Last edited 3 years ago by Bill Hickling
4
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
3 years ago

“Build Back Better”

Whoo hoo – we’re with you.

There is a MASSIVE problem with “Build Back Better” – it makes the assumption that what we had before, in this case pre March 2020 was fundamentally bad. The obvious question:

In what way was it bad? Examples please.

Now could you explain in which ways you are going to rebuild in ways that are eminently better than what we had before.

Or is this a case of destruction for destruction’s sake?

10
0
marebobowl
marebobowl
3 years ago

Build back better! How exactly does one build back better when they destroyed their own country. Oh people you have been warned this is only the beginning of the hell coming. Only the beginning. Especially when idiots like Gove repeat the mantra WEF “build back better” you know they are determined to get the job done. How much were they paid? What were they promised? Are their children part of the protected. It is their future.

6
0
SimCS
SimCS
3 years ago

“broad shoulders of the U.K. Treasury”. Well that puts paid to Sturgeon’s belief that Scotland can be financially independent.

1
0
imp66
imp66
3 years ago

Of course furlough will be extended! Only way to keep this pantomime going. Pay us all (?) off! We ,as a nation, won’t continue to obey our masters of they ain’t paying us! We now live in a country where the frightened, the gullible and the stupid follow the bast*rds!

6
0
imp66
imp66
3 years ago

Remember that “magic money tree” that they don’t have? Keep on shaking it, don’t they!

4
0
Prickly Thistle
Prickly Thistle
3 years ago

Nicola Sturgeon would have the begging bowl out, wouldn’t she?

I’m beginning to think some of us are work-shy.

2
0
Mayflower
Mayflower
3 years ago

“Build back better” is a maxim of the New World Order control freaks. Destroy people’s lives with a hyped pandemic or tax the hell out of the energy they need, and people will bend to their masters.

Dangerous clowns. Drunk on the power the scamdemic has given them and the endless fake money pouring from the BOE. Much of that prnted money is for furlough – essentially, a from of dole. The Government issuing you income and in return you be a good boy and girl.

Reject all the garbage. like the hundreds of thousands marching in London last week-end (not that the MSM would acknowledge it).

4
0
MrkMtchll
MrkMtchll
3 years ago

I see a picture of Gove and I now understand what prompts random acts of violence like punching a stranger on the nose!

Last edited 3 years ago by MrkMtchll
3
0
SomersetHoops
SomersetHoops
3 years ago

That idiot Gove says thanks to the broad shoulders of the treasury he can pay for more people to be paid for doing nothing. It’s nothing of the sort, it’s the taxes of people working and companies keeping going in the difficult restricted circumstances that his hopeless government are retaining without reason that will be paying for this now and for years to come.

3
0
Flying Saucer
Flying Saucer
3 years ago

No one in the “revolving door sector” (politics-industry-financial, in other words the Cabal) gives a damn about the money printing or debts being racked up, no one ever expects it to be repaid. Hyperinflation is coming soon as Michael Burry of sub-prime big short fame noted recently. The only difference with the Weimar Republic will be that we have now moved to digital (not paper) currency, but you still won’t be able to buy anything with the digital currency.

1
0

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