August 17, 2004
Speaking of Will Baude, he's been writing lately about words banned in Scrabble, from tournament play or generally. I've been taking close note of which words are and aren't allowed in online Boggle, and it turns out that while, like in Scrabble, jew isn't accepted, the word goy (of particular interest to me, for some reason) is. Goy, at least, is banned in Scrabble.
Jew and Goy were omitted from the OSPD3 along with a few hundred other potentially offensive words after complaints from parents, but those words are still allowed in tournament play.
WEBoggle uses a subset of the Merriam-Webster online dictionary that apparently was compiled by hand, so as words are found that are verifiable via M-W, they are added to the WEBoggle dictionary.
yeah, you should check out will's posts (see the links above) for the controversy, which appartenly involves some of those words being disallowed in tournament play (?)
I'm not quite sure why anyone would have a problem with Jew...why that and not, say, "jewish," which I presume was OK?
Goy being banned, that's pretty funny.
That's interesting -- it looks like they do allow jewish. Maybe it's because jew can be used as a verb in a sick and derogatory sense (as in "I don't jew out of my comeuppance").
Isn't "Jew" banned because it's properly always capitalized?
ogged: interesting in light of this development. I'm pretty sure internet is and has been an acceptable Boggle word.
Paul and Ogged are right, when combined. Jew was banned because it is non-capitalized only when used as slang. "To jew out of this," "or to jew him out of his life's savings." Legend has it that the banned list began, in fact, when some little old lady looked up "jew" in the OSPD and found only the offensive definition. Take with a grain of salt.
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