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"Scrabble World in Turmoil!" Topic


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Personal logo Editor in Chief Bill The Editor of TMP Fezian02 Mar 2021 9:57 p.m. PST

The world of professional Scrabble playing has been thrown into uproar and turmoil after a vote at the weekend that means up to 400 words deemed slurs or offensive will be removed from the Scrabble dictionary.

link

Capt John Miller02 Mar 2021 10:24 p.m. PST

Is that all? Goodness I was hoping for words to be put on the board that have more than seven letters.. Imagine Photophosphorylation in the Triple Word Score Box.
I have three words to that…

LIKE A BOSS!

Personal logo 20thmaine Supporting Member of TMP03 Mar 2021 7:04 a.m. PST

Hmm….I think they should go further and anything rude should be banned.

According to my "Cassell's Dictionary of Slang" the word "push" was quite rude in the 17th Century. And also the word "bill" ….

Shagnasty Supporting Member of TMP03 Mar 2021 9:01 a.m. PST

The inmates are running the asylum.

Personal logo Parzival Supporting Member of TMP03 Mar 2021 11:41 a.m. PST

And they're gonna enforce this how???
The game doesn't come with a dictionary, and most people just use whatever one they have in the house, and if some players want to use crude or offensive words, they will use crude or offensive words. Heck, I expect there are people out there who insist on playing the game by only using crude and offensive words!

Tempest in a teapot.


Can't wait to hear what they plan for Cards Against Humanity. wink

coryfromMissoula04 Mar 2021 11:01 a.m. PST

Cards Against Humanity went through there own rough patch recently with sexual harassment complaints against the CEO founder.

Personal logo etotheipi Sponsoring Member of TMP04 Mar 2021 4:21 p.m. PST

And they're gonna enforce this how???

In professional tourneys, they have refs. The same as 40K. If you don't play "pro", you don't have to worry about that.

BTW … the WESPA Rules could give a 40K codex a good run for their money!

Isn't deeming one word a slur and another not offensive to someone?

If it's OK for me to use this word with someone else when both me and my conversation partner are members of the referenced group, can I use it in Scrabble if both players are?

If it's an offensive word in one dialect of English, but not another, can someone who natively speaks the version where it is not offensive use it? (This is the only case where I'm rooting for some cigarette smokers.)

If someone is a member of a subculture that uses a word in an intentionally offensive way, can only they not use it, but their opponent can? (I'm looking at you, 1d4chan!)

Why do I suddenly feel an adolescent urge to go look up dirty words in the dictionary?

Wouldn't it be easier to publish a list of the banned words … or maybe just link to Urban Dictionary?

… OK … that's enough of that … for now! :)

Personal logo etotheipi Sponsoring Member of TMP04 Mar 2021 4:31 p.m. PST

OK … I lied.

If a group has "reclaimed" a word and they no longer consider it offensive, but actively use the word in the name of their own advocacy groups, but it was offensive for most of my life, am I banned from using it?

If it was "reclaimed" for most of my kids' lives, can they use it?

John the OFM04 Mar 2021 8:46 p.m. PST

Why do I suddenly feel an adolescent urge to go look up dirty words in the dictionary?

That's the first thing we all did when we got our Larousse French dictionary in high school.
And the "hummina hummina" German dictionary in college. In fact the German teacher* asked us if we had looked up naughty words in the first class.

* He was Ukrainian.

John the OFM05 Mar 2021 9:31 a.m. PST

What words are "banned"?
We used to give Triple Word score for Carlin Words. But then, we didn't compete in sanctioned tournaments.

Personal logo Parzival Supporting Member of TMP05 Mar 2021 10:21 p.m. PST

The current list of now grossly offensive words would appear to include "chopsticks" and "camel." But only in English, because only English is offensive. I think I'll switch to Pig Latin. (Or is that offensive to swine?)

Personal logo etotheipi Sponsoring Member of TMP06 Mar 2021 3:00 p.m. PST

I can't find the official(?) list, but from several news articles it appears that British cigarette smokers are out of luck in North American sponsored Scrabble games.

Personal logo Parzival Supporting Member of TMP07 Mar 2021 10:17 a.m. PST

PS: Don't mean to confuse the actual Official List of Naughty Words You Can't Spell In Scrabble (whatever it's actually called) with the growing number of words that offend the offendables, as my two words were derived from the recent effort to cancel Dr. Seuss.

I was a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, as well as a librarian, and both groups were all opposed to censorship as long as I could remember. Not any more, apparently. frown

Personal logo Dan Cyr Supporting Member of TMP07 Mar 2021 11:29 a.m. PST

I'm sorry, how was Dr. Seuss "cancelled"? The privately owned family publishing company decided to not republish any longer six (6) books that they found to be offensive to a number of groups. As far as I'm aware, the six books in question have been out of print for some time. None of Dr. Seuss' other books were withdrawn, nor were they considered offensive by his family.

There are a number of books that I read as a child in the 1950s that are embarrassing to read today and were then, as now, offensive to various minorities, nationalities, women and others, not of the white, Anglo-Saxon majority of that time.

Dr. Seuss was not "cancelled", merely some of his books with ugly racial stereotypes are now no longer going to be published.

Personal logo Parzival Supporting Member of TMP07 Mar 2021 1:24 p.m. PST

To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street does not contain racial stereotypes, unless one calls the fact that chopsticks are indeed the favored tableware in eastern Asian cultures a stereotype. Nor is riding a camel a stereotype either— I have been to the Middle East, and seen locals riding camels. In fact the Mongolian SCBWI chapter sponsors a "mobile library" in rural areas of the nation— with the transport for the books being a camel!
If anything, Dr. Seuss's book is celebrating the melting pot of cultures that is America— you can indeed see a remarkable mix of people, cultures and ideals in an American city on an American street— if anything, a celebration of diversity and the Great Melting Pot.
But mostly the book is just being absurdly over-the-top to amuse very young children, who I guarantee you don't pick up anything negative from the book. There's no hate there, nor is there offense, either real or intended.

I was gaming with a friend last night, a librarian, and we discussed this briefly. His point of view was that if he had Mein Kampf on his library shelf (and he did), that then he should have everything else on the library shelf, too, and let the readers and the parents decide what to read or share for themselves.

My view is this: If one sees something in a book that one believes needs to be refuted, then write a book oneself to refute it. If one can't, that tells me that either the point can't be refuted and the complainer is wrong, or the complainer doesn't have the capability of refuting the objectionable material, in which case the complainer is also probably wrong, and should leave the decisions regarding the book to others to decide for themselves.

Right now we have a rush to cancel or downgrade everything because of the supposed attitudes of the writers. On the hit list are To Kill a Mockingbird, Gone with the Wind, and Huckleberry Finn.
At some point we're going to "cancel" Shakespeare because he had no "right" to write a play about a black man (Othello).

Here's a challenge for you: without rereading any Dr. Seuss book, please tell me what hateful racial stereotype you picked up from one of his books when you were a child and they were read to you, or you read them yourself. I bet you can't recall a thing. I'll bet it didn't even enter your mind at the time.
I *do* remember a book by Dr. Seuss, dealing with racism— a book about "Star-bellied Sneeches" who lorded it over the Sneeches who didn't have stars on their bellies. So a man popped up with a machine that put stars on the bellies, making a lot of money off of bare-bellied Sneeches. This upset the Star-bellied Sneeches, so he made a machine to remove stars, and made a lot of money from that. And the Sneeches kept walking through his machines, getting stars and removing stars in a vain attempt to be "better" than everybody else. It ended up with no-one knowing who was or wasn't originally star-bellied, and eventually everyone realizing that the appearance didn't matter— Essentialy teaching the young reader to "Judge by the content of our character, not the color of our skin." That point I got at a very young age, and it stuck with me. Would that it had resonated with some of the offendables today.
In any case, I can't think of anything offensive in the Dr. Seuss books I read. If it was there, it didn't register with my young mind. And I don't think it would today, either.

Personal logo Parzival Supporting Member of TMP08 Mar 2021 9:10 p.m. PST

This is indeed about more than six books (but why withdraw the books? Why not simply edit them?). In fact, that action was in response to calls to ban all his books because of a handful of images in a very low number of the hundreds he wrote, I'm not just crying wolf, or blowing things out of proportion; there is a censorship crisis going on that is neither warranted, worthwhile, right, or effective, and is certainly not good.

I recommend Alan Dershowitz's most recent op-ed on this issue.

Personal logo javelin98 Supporting Member of TMP09 Mar 2021 11:44 a.m. PST

I hate to say it, but the most effective "cancel culture" efforts in recent history were (1) Nazi book burnings and (2) Stalinist purges of disfavored rivals.

And that's where we are in danger of heading. Seriously.

Personal logo Parzival Supporting Member of TMP10 Mar 2021 10:33 a.m. PST

You forgot Mao's Cultural Revolution.

To me, silencing a man is far more vile than anything he could possibly write or say.

Personal logo javelin98 Supporting Member of TMP10 Mar 2021 12:32 p.m. PST

Right! Thanks for mentioning that, Parzival. I can't believe I left that one out.

svsavory12 Mar 2021 8:39 a.m. PST

So we are now comparing Scrabble Tournament rules to Nazi book burnings, Stalinist purges, and Mao's Cultural Revolution? Okay…

Personal logo 20thmaine Supporting Member of TMP12 Mar 2021 9:01 a.m. PST

In professional tourneys, they have refs. The same as 40K.

So now I have an image of a Space Marine Librarian adjudicating at a Scrabble convention…..

Personal logo 20thmaine Supporting Member of TMP12 Mar 2021 9:07 a.m. PST

Does letting 500,000 people die of Covid count as "cancel culture"?

Does anyone know if the first Dr Seuss book "The Pocket Book of Boners" (1931) is still available? grin

Personal logo Parzival Supporting Member of TMP13 Mar 2021 1:26 p.m. PST

It all starts with baby steps. As a writer and former librarian, I am opposed to censorship, especially of innocuous words.
Can I use the word "INDIAN"? "BLOODY"? "NIGGARD"? "ORIENT"? "LOON"? "CRAZY"? "MAD"? "MADMAN"? "MADAM"? "NUT"? "KRAUT"? "FROG"? "IGNORANT"? "MORON"? "IDIOT"? "FOOL"? "BOY"?

All of these words and more can be highly offensive in context, or have been found offensive by those who don't know what they actually mean.

The truth is that people can find ways to offend people by using far more than just words— audible tone, facial expression, body language, etc.. And people can find ways to be offended even by things and statements which are not meant offensively or derisively. Attempting to police such things is fundamentally impossible, not to mention more grossly offensive to me than the words ever could be. But apparently, my taking offense at such a situation is to be discounted— "Some are more equal than others," Orwell wrote.

Last Hussar02 Jun 2022 8:35 a.m. PST

So, are those in opposition ok with the 'N', 'F', and 'C' words being used on national TV?

Grattan54 Supporting Member of TMP07 Jun 2022 7:37 p.m. PST

What ever happened to "I may not agree with what you said, but I will defend your right to say it?"

Wolfhag08 Jun 2022 1:39 p.m. PST

Grattan54,
Snowflakes and the Cancel Culture, that's what happened.

Wolfhag

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