Notice to Scrabble fans, the following scene is not drawn from a twisted imagination. Here you are in the languor of a holiday afternoon, facing a particularly tough opponent. You’re missing ten points to win the game, but the letters spread out on your easel aren’t worth much. Suddenly, you are struck by an illumination: if you play the word “boche”, you will win with 12 additional points. You line up your 5 letters on the board greedily, convinced of having triumphed. But your opponent contests your victory, arguing that the term used is pejorative and xenophobic.
You can’t believe it: since when, in Scrabble, do we care about the meaning of the word placed on the board? By rummaging through the rules of the game, however, you realize that your competitor is right: in the new version of Scrabble, which you bought for the occasion, this insult no longer has any place. The word is denied you. You lose the game with the feeling of having been cheated as much as during a game of Monopoly.
In 2021, the famous game got a makeover. Not just graphics. A new rule has slipped into the manual of new Scrabble boxes sold on the market: “All words constituting an incitement to hatred and discrimination are excluded”. The instructions, vague, could upset many family parties. Not only. Because the 16,000 French Scrabble players in competition should also be concerned from next year. According to information from L’Express, the new edition of Scrabble game official, published by Larousse editions and based on the official list of words authorized by the Fédération Internationale de Scrabble Francophone (FISF), should be redacted by more than twenty words, despite the opposing opinion of its editorial board. These omissions, suggested by the company Mattel, owner of the game internationally, concern insults of a racist nature (like “negrillon”), sexist (like “poufiasse”), xenophobic (“chicano”, ” schleu”) or even homophobic (“tarlouze”).
“Lez”, a word banned on television
These changes echo a small revolution that already took place in the United States, a little over two years ago. In July 2020, the North American Scrabble Players Association (or Naspa, for North American Scrabble Players Association), announced that it wanted to ban from the list of words used during tournaments more than 200 terms deemed insulting or discriminatory, related to the gender, sexual orientation or ethnic origin. The decision takes place in a very specific context: that of the Black Lives Matter movement, relaunched by the murder of African-American George Floyd by a white police officer. It causes an outcry from the players but Hasbro, the company which exploits the rights of Scrabble in North America, supports the initiative.
This is not the first time that, across the Atlantic, words have been banned from a set. Already, in the early 2000s, a list of several words had been banned in competition. At the time, the game was so fashionable in the United States that its tournaments were broadcast live on the sports television channel ESPN. During a decisive stage of a tournament, in 2004, a player decides to use the word “LEZ”, American abbreviation of “lesbian”. “If we can in theory use all the words in the dictionary in Scrabble, there are certain terms that we cannot use on American television”, reports Hervé Bohbot, member of the editorial board of The Scrabble Game Official and French classic Scrabble champion in 2005 and 2015. A scandal broke out. The affair contributes to putting an end to the retransmission of Scrabble on American television.
Mattel hired a linguist
It is in this context that the American company owning the rights to the game in the rest of the world, Mattel, decided to offer grooming to the French-speaking championships, after taking care of those in English in 2021. “Mattel obviously prefers to delete potentially ‘offensive’ words to avoid possible legal action,” says Hervé Bohbot. For this, the brand first included a rule prohibiting any word of a discriminatory nature in the game manual sold commercially. Then, she sought to modify the content of the dictionary that governs French-speaking Scrabble tournaments. Published every four years, the next opus of this work is expected for 2023. “Two decisions which do not have the same impact, remarks Sylvain Ravot, an assiduous participant in Scrabble tournaments for more than twenty years and vice-champion of France of Scrabble in English in 2009. When the first can easily be ignored by people who play in a family setting, the same is not true for a decision that influences the content of a dictionary.
These suggestions provoked heated debates. For the past year, heated discussions have taken place between Larousse editions, which publish the work in question, Mattel and the editorial board of The Scrabble Game Official. It all starts in January 2022 when, by email, its members receive a list of 109 words selected by Mattel and designated as “sensitive”. This anthology is accompanied by a commentary by a linguist recruited by the company. “As a family-oriented brand aware of the impact of words and their evolutions, Mattel hired an independent linguist to identify hateful words in order to review the official list of words allowed to be played during Scrabble competitions”, confirmed the French branch of the company in writing, explaining its decision: “When we play Scrabble – as in life – the words we choose are important. Words have the power to reinforce, encourage and honour, but they can also be used to weaken, discourage and disrespect”.
“All this is not very logical”
In this very large list, which L’Express was able to consult, the company suggests deleting around a hundred terms, including “bamboula”, “bicot”, “nègre”, “poufiasse”, “bitch”, “rital”, “feuj”, “chinoiser”, “putassier”, “bimbo”, “travelo”, “keuf”, “beur” or even “cagole”, considered too pejorative, racist or sexist. “We really found everything in this file, remembers Hervé Bohbot. They had clearly gone there with a trowel”. At first, the editorial board of the dictionary refuses to exclude these terms. “This request was experienced as a real injunction by the Scrabble community, says Pascal Astresses, vice-president of the French Federation. Even if the words in question are connoted, they remain in the classic dictionary, which implies that they normally have their place in that of the game.
Opposed to Mattel’s request, the editorial board of the dictionary tries to make its case. “We have tried to highlight the polysemy of certain terms. “Bicot”, for example, can be understood as a racist term, but also as the child of the goat. This is also the case with “bamboula”, which can mean “partying”, specifies Hervé Bohbot. It’s all a question of the cursor”. After several exchanges of emails, the company reduced its requirements to 31 terms to be avoided. Among them, “goudou”, because “mostly understood as hateful”, “tarlouze” (for the same reason), “enculeur” (term “offensive” which “aims in the primary sense at the homosexual community”) or even “nabot”, a word “offensive to short people”.
“This list has given rise to absurd arbitrations. If I think that certain terms do not quite belong in the Scrabble dictionary – like tarlouze or tantouze, for example, which after all have only been added in 2016 to our guide -, the deletion of others is not really justified, continues Hervé Bohbot. Before agreeing with the opinion of the committee for this case, they wanted to remove ‘bitch’, for example , but not ‘bitch’ or ‘bitch’. It didn’t all make much sense.” In total, according to the latest version of the list consulted by the Express, 62 words (including a term and its plural and feminine variants) should be banned from the ninth version of L’Officiel du Scrabble. Included in this inventory are banished words: “asiate”, “boche”, “chicano”, “enculeur”, “femmelette”, “gogole”, “goudou”, “gouine”, “lopette”, “nabot”, ” negro”, “queer”, “poufiasse”, “romano”, “schleu”, “sidaic”, “tafiole”, “tantouse”, “tarlouze” or “travelo”. In extremis, Scrabble enthusiasts managed to get the words “fucker”, “bitch” and “bitch” to be maintained, most often emphasizing the polysemy of the terms.
“Disappointment” and “bitterness”
“This situation is all the stranger since these words remain very present in the 2023 edition of the Petit Larousse illustré, notes Pascal Astresses. You therefore have two books, published by the same publisher, which will no longer have the same content “ . With the deadline approaching – the dictionary must be sent to the printers in the coming weeks before publication in June 2023 – the French-speaking Scrabble community finally gave in. But resentment dominates. In an email that the Express was able to consult, Patrice Jeanneret, president of the FISF, thus wrote to understand the “disappointment” and the “bitterness” of the editorial board “with regard to this situation of censorship”. But “in view of the various contracts linking the FISF and Editions Larousse to Mattel, as well as our own use of the Scrabble brand, he wrote, it turns out that we must comply, even if this decision arouses a total misunderstanding”.
A reversal which is largely explained, according to Hervé Bohbot, by financial motivations. “The FISF receives around 2 euros in royalties from each dictionary sale, and around 40,000 copies are bought each year, explains Hervé Bohbot. This is its main source of income, the FISF does not therefore has no real interest in upsetting Mattel”. Each year, Mattel would thus pay between 80,000 and 100,000 euros to the federation.
A real financial windfall for the French-speaking Federation, the dictionary seems to have made it vulnerable to the demands of the company that owns Scrabble. “Unlike the Spanish Federation, which has chosen to model their rules on the decisions of the Royal Spanish Academy, for example”, adds Hervé Bohbot, who nevertheless puts things into perspective: “These deletions will not necessarily be disabling for the players. But in principle, it’s worrying.” Players can console themselves with the addition of a thousand words to the ninth edition of The Scrabble Official. Among them, “woke” and “wokism”. An avalanche of W to triple your points… and finally win the game?