Racial slurs could be banned as playable moves in official Scrabble competitions amid anti-racism protests by the Black Lives Matter movement.
Offensive terms including the ‘n-word’, insults against the elderly, such as ‘wrinklies’, porno anak kecil desah and derogatory phrases used to attack the LGBT community can still be used to score points in the popular game, which sees opponents place letter tiles onto the board in order to spell out words.
But following worldwide anti-racism protests in the wake of the death of American George Floyd, officials who govern Scrabble tournaments in Britain are reportedly discussing whether to ban offensive terms from their competitions.
Offensive terms including the ‘n-word’, insults against the elderly and derogatory phrases used to attack members of the LGBT community can still be used to score points in Scrabble
Though bosses at the World English Scrabble Players Association say there are no current plans to stop competitors from spelling out racial slurs to score points, they are discussing the ‘important and thorny’ issue.
Chairman of the association, Chris Lipe, told The Times: ‘There’s vigorous debate across the Scrabble community.’
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The talks come as the North American Scrabbles Players Association’s chief executive backed calls to remove more than 230 slurs from its playlist.
In Scrabble, a game which is sold in 121 countries and is available in 29 languages, players attempt to score the highest point total by taking turns to spell out words using a selection of letter tiles they have picked at random.
The Official Scrabble Words (pictured) – otherwise known as the Scrabble Dictionary – is the ultimate authority of eligible words