Just recently they announced that they will be adding more than 5000 new words reflecting 21’s century’s new trends, syles and facts to create a new edition of The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary with the help of the lexicographer, Peter Sokolowski-- much to the excitement and joy to the Scrabble players. It added up almost 40 pages to the Scrabble-sanctioned book of 100,000 already existing, playable words. As they haven’t given out the full list, they introduced however, 30 words and internet slangs that will now be added to the compilation for the fifth edition. This means, people can now use vlog, yuzu, selfie, hashtag, schmutz and beatbox legally without opponents questioning and challenging the word out of the board.
Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster editor-at-large gave a statement: “Language is constantly evolving and new words are added to Merriam-Webster dictionaries on an ongoing basis.”
Moreover, it isn’t only those which excited the players. Quinzee or quinzhee, a shelter made out of hollowing out a pile of snow can give one a staggering 401 points if one plays his/her cards right. Robin Pollock Daniel, a clinical psychologist from Toronto and a champion of the North American Scrabble Players Association also got ecstatic with the newly-introduced two-letter words giving them more possibilities on combining the new word with others such as ‘te’ a variant of ‘ti’ and three others: da, gi, and po.
“I call those the amino acids of Scrabble. The more two-letter words we have, the more possibilities a word will fit,” Daniel mentioned.
