‘OK’ now OK in Scrabble (but only if you’re in America)

NO family weekend is complete without a Scrabble squabble. Now there are 300 more words for indignant opponents to protest about.

For the first time ‘OK’ is now OK, along with ‘ew’ to mean an expression of disgust. Other new acceptable words include twerk, beatdown, zomboid, sheeple, emoji, facepalm, frowny, hivemind, puggle and nubber.

For now, though, the 300 words have been added only to the US edition of the Scrabble dictionary – so British purists will have to take a firm stand against opponents trying their luck with them here. Scrabble etiquette dictates players must agree which dictionary to use before play.

Among words added by US publisher Merriam-Webster are 20 that begin with Q but do not require a U, such as ‘qapik’, a unit of currency in Azerbaijan.

The dictionary is used in tournaments in the US and Canada. But the rest of the world uses the British version, Collins Official Scrabble Words, which has 276,663 words – 90,000 more than the US.

Natalie Zolty, of the Association of British Scrabble Players, said: ‘We’ve got more words that the Americans, and we are expecting a new edition of the British dictionary next year, when we’ll probably be getting all the words they’ve got and more besides. But we don’t use their spellings of course.

‘A lot of purists are saying OK is not a word, but I think it makes the game more accessible.’