Can Scrabble afford to induct words like LOL, OMG into its dictionary

The announcement that Scrabble will deign to induct more words into its dictionary come April 10 has probably evoked great joy in the community of wordsmiths addicted to the board game, especially as they have been asked to choose the “first” one.

But the question is moot whether the game’s authorities can afford to be so stingy — new entries only once a decade, on an average — at a time when dictionaries are puffing up their ledgers with dozens of them every year.

The urgency to include is manifest: many people believe that LOL and OMG are actually words and need to be put out of their misery one way or another. That the game frustratingly gives the maximum points for inclusion of letters that traditionally get little play in conventional English further underlines the need to expand the base.

Little wonder then that buffs are proposing short, sweet and lucrative constructs such as zyme (18 points) instead of longer candidates.

Welsh obviously offers the richest cache of such permutations with cym and twp already accepted by Scrabble, but pressure to deliver on x, y and z — which doubtless led to the inclusion of za as a variant of pizza — may see a Polish, Croatian and other suitably consonant-heavy languages being tapped.

That will help make a quintessentially English game, a global one.