Scrabble Word Showdown

For the first time in 9 years, Scrabble and Merriam-Webster will be updating The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary with thousands of new words.  They’ve even reserved a spot in the dictionary for a word nominated and chosen by Scrabble fans.

Scrabble launched a Facebook contest on March 12th, called Scrabble Word Showdown that will run until March 28th.  Fans can nominate and vote on words that are fun and relevant for today’s players.  On April 2nd, 16 words will be unveiled from the pool of nominations in a March Madness style bracket.  These will then be narrowed down to 1 word which will be revealed on April 10th.  It will be published in the 5th edition of the dictionary, which will go on sale in August, and available to play in the digital versions of Scrabble on Facebook, iPhone, iPad, and Android.

This basically becomes a popularity contest for words, reflecting the language of this generation, pop culture, trends and techie fabulousness.  I think this is a genius way for Scrabble to run a fan acquisition campaign while driving up the engagement on their Facebook timeline.  The promotion offers no reward other than the satisfaction of knowing players made a contribution to the game.

Here’s a sneak peak at some of the words that have been nominated:

  • Photobomb
  • Twerk
  • Bromance
  • Redonkulous
  • Amazeballs
  • Selfie
  • Zen
  • Ew
  • Dingledorf
  • Cray
  • Hashtag
  • Tweet

What word would you like to see in the Players Dictionary?  I hope they don’t pick a weak sauce word.  Game on!

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