The scrambling of Scrabble

When you’re playing a word game, don’t you sometimes feel how horribly unfair it is that players who know more words prosper? Wouldn’t it be better to have word games that didn’t rely so heavily on knowledge of the dictionary, that weren’t so, y’know, wordy? And, come to that, wouldn’t a kindler, gentler sort of word game be, like, collaborative – so that players helped each-other to celebrate their diversity rather than competing to, ugh, ‘win’? 

Mattel has you covered. The company has announced that Scrabble sets will now have double-sided boards. On the obverse of the traditional boards, with their intimidating triple-word score squares and requirement to know words like ‘XI’, ‘XU’, ‘QI’ and ‘QAT’, will be ‘Scrabble Together’, a game ‘designed with inclusivity and collaboration in mind’: ‘a collaborative, faster-paced version of the iconic word game to make gameplay more accessible for anyone who finds word games intimidating’.