The latest edition of The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (published by Merriam-Webster) has now appeared – and it contains 500 new words. Well, some of them are new, but some of them we have known for quite a while. Vape we have known for several years as the name of the activity of vaping instead of smoking (but every bit as dangerous). And dumpster has been the (largely) American name for those familiar big dump bins. But others are definitely new – many being abbreviations from the world of texting. Apparently ‘za’ is now a word – it is the text abbreviation of pizza, and they also call guacamole just ‘guac’. But the really surprising additions (to me) are all the emotional grunts and groans that are now admitted to the game of Scrabble as if they were real words. Here are some examples: ‘augh’ (defined as ‘an interjection expressing frustration’); ‘bleech’ (expressing revulsion); ‘eew’ (an exclamation of disgust); ‘grr’ (an interjection showing anger or annoyance); and ‘wahh’ (and interjection used to express wailing). Do you regard those interjections or exclamations as real words worthy of a Scrabble game? And how about deliberate misspellings? Can they be allowed to score points? Here are two examples: the new Scrabble dictionary allows ‘wuz’ (as a comic misspelling of was) and ‘thanx’ as a familiar misspelling of thanks. My comment is: huh? (I’m not sure if they accept huh yet.) Apparently serious (and highly competitive) Scrabble players are not happy. The new additions have received plenty of hype in America (the birthplace of Scrabble) but several players say that it’ll be months before the North American Scrabble Players Association—whose own wordlist governs competitions in the US—is finished vetting this batch for competitive play. And what should you and I be doing about this new list? Well, we don’t play in earnest competitions – we play for fun around the dining room table. So, what we do is… choose our own dictionary and stick to that! If it’s not in the Macquarie (or the Australian Oxford or the Collins – which ever dictionary we choose) then it’s not in the game!