Speed daters like it dirty

In a cheeky bid to spice up London’s speed dating scene, a nocturnal events organiser has come up with the idea of reinventing the rules of Scrabble.

In the process, he is transforming the venerable board game, a favourite of wordsmiths around the world, into an exercise in erotic diction.

On a recent rainy autumn evening, his event – called Dirty Scrabble – attracted a small coterie of singletons, young and old, to a cosy pub lounge in the bustling west London district of Hammersmith.

Trendy music, dimmed lights, candles, cocktails, and a naughty game: everything was in place for romance to blossom.

Entrepreneur Jordi Sinclair, the founder of a company called Smudged Lipstick, which organises “random, quirky events”, is the brain behind the idea of combining dating with filthy wordplay.

“People like Scrabble but in a dating capacity it’s maybe a bit too straight,” the 35-year-old, wearing a black T-shirt and ripped jeans, told AFP.

“Dirty words tend to open up the conversation.”

However, Scrabble is a game of patience requiring the utmost concentration and seemingly ill-suited to the frenetic pace and emotional tension inherent in the timed meetings of speed dating.

So Sinclair has devised some new, minimal, rules to his dirty version: no points, 11 letters picked out at a time instead of seven and the right to take some liberties with spelling.

He hopes players will shed any sense of shame and embrace the maxim: “Where there is embarrassment, there is no pleasure”.

“We try to make it as dirty as possible,” Sinclair said. “After a drink or two, the words become a lot dirtier.

“We want people to be creative with their words as well, so if they want to come up with new words that are dirty, they can.” – AFP

Dirty words tend to open up the conversation. Jordi Sinclair Inventor a dirty version of Scrabble