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2013 School Scrabble Championship comment 3: TENNISES and other strange plurals
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Donald Sauter
Jun 4, 2013, 11:47:36 AM6/4/13
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2013 School Scrabble Championship comment 3: TENNISES and other strange plurals
NOTE: this comment is in response to an interesting article in Deadspin on the 2013 School Scrabble Championship. The author would not post my comments, so rec.games.boards gets them. The Deadspin article is at:
http://deadspin.com/searching-for-anything-but-bobby-fischer-at-school-scra-496035498
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Regarding TENNISES and CURLINGS, the weird plurals allowed in Scrabble are not specific to sports. The Official Word List is indiscriminate: all nouns can be pluralized. Thus, you can safely play plurals of non-count nouns such as IRES, WOOLS, NONCES, MOXIES, PATIENCES, PEWTERS, OATMEALS, AVARICES, TREASONS, SEDITIONS, ABOLITIONISMS, NOTHINGNESSES, etc., etc.
Even with my contempt for Scrabble's Official Word List, I will grant that this is a touchy area. Sure, there's a tiny handful of experts who can memorize the the whole list of valid "game pieces", but is it reasonable to expect regular, intelligent people to know exactly where the dividing line between count and non-count nouns lies? In my club, which uses a conventional dictionary, forming a plural of a noun that turns out to be non-count will get you another try.
Donald Sauter
NOTE: this comment is in response to an interesting article in Deadspin on the 2013 School Scrabble Championship. The author would not post my comments, so rec.games.boards gets them. The Deadspin article is at:
http://deadspin.com/searching-for-anything-but-bobby-fischer-at-school-scra-496035498
***
Regarding TENNISES and CURLINGS, the weird plurals allowed in Scrabble are not specific to sports. The Official Word List is indiscriminate: all nouns can be pluralized. Thus, you can safely play plurals of non-count nouns such as IRES, WOOLS, NONCES, MOXIES, PATIENCES, PEWTERS, OATMEALS, AVARICES, TREASONS, SEDITIONS, ABOLITIONISMS, NOTHINGNESSES, etc., etc.
Even with my contempt for Scrabble's Official Word List, I will grant that this is a touchy area. Sure, there's a tiny handful of experts who can memorize the the whole list of valid "game pieces", but is it reasonable to expect regular, intelligent people to know exactly where the dividing line between count and non-count nouns lies? In my club, which uses a conventional dictionary, forming a plural of a noun that turns out to be non-count will get you another try.
Donald Sauter
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