Scrabble rules set to change

With Mattel, owners of the game which has sold 150 million sets across the world, announcing sweeping changes in the traditional Scrabble, purists have accused the company of “tarting up” the board game.

Places, celebrities, and company names — “capitalised words” according to Scrabble experts — will be accepted from July, the “Daily Express” reported.  The company is even considering allowing words to be spelt backwards, upwards and to be placed on the board without connecting to another word.

This has led Scrabble lovers, more accustomed to the mental rigours of defeating an opponent with a triple-letter word score, to label the moves an affront to the “proper rules”.
‘Purists’ are vowing to stick with the “tried and true” limits of the game that have stood since 1948.

“There is no way to check if a name or place name is correct and that allowing words to be placed without connecting to other letters would make the game too easy.” Scrabble is almost like serious business for millions of Britons, so much so that teams from Scrabble leagues across the country took part in a four-day tournament over Easter, while “diehard competitors played for 27 hours without sleep during a non-stop contest running from midday Saturday until 3 pm Sunday,” the report said.