Proper Nouns Now Allowed In Scrabble: Your Mediaite Cheat Sheet
As reported by Robert Quigley over at Geekosystem, a pretty substantial change was reported as coming to a classic language-driven board game: the legalization of proper nouns in Scrabble. Robert was able to track down a Mattel rep to discuss the change (he’s a little shaken up about it), and he found some good news to assure purists that the traditional game is not being altered. The change seems only to apply to a more “family-oriented variant” of the game.
This, however, destroys a gold mine of entertainment for the Media geek in me. Robert had some fun and showed how SHAKIRA now provides an excellent avenue for a Scrabble Bingo where your only other option may have been a massively obscure Greek musical instrument. There has to be more helpful proper nouns from across the media world that will help you succeed, and that’s what I’m here to help you find.
I was being mildly generous with the laws of random chance related to tiles while steering clear of multipliers for scoring; I did observe some of the major rules of letter distribution from the English version as best as possible, though. This last rule has me heartbroken: With only 1 z in the standard, 100-tile game, there’s no way you could end up with a pocket of ZZEINEB and turn “SKI” into Brzezinski (which would be a savage 152 point play on a triple-word score if it was humanly possible). There is still a lot more out there though, so let’s get this going.
Cable News Division
Mika Brzezinski may be out thanks to one too many Zs, but that doesn’t mean her other Morning Joe counterparts couldn’t help you out. With high letter frequency, GEIST could be a nice early play. Carrying a hand of OORSUHG and you could turn the measly four-letter CARB into a bingo driven SCARBOROUGH. Willie will only get you 6 points, but Morning Joe himself could be good for a minimum of 69 without multipliers, which would be tough to avoid on a word that long.
= 6
= 69 (with Bingo)
Let’s stay on the 24-hour nets for our next one: picking between Glenn Beck and Rachel Maddow? The Scrabble board says the MSNBC host is going to slightly more productive for your scoring needs, but as Beck would point out, you’d have to get more handouts from the bank after you play Rachel’s name for only one additional point. And he just doesn’t understand why he’s the only one pointing that out.
= 13
= 12
Late Night TV Division
Team Leno or Team Conan? The math says that Conan will get you a slight advantage, especially in the 18-34 demographic. However, massively appropriately, David Letterman takes care of both them quite easily in the game of Scrabble. If LET or MAN are on the board, it won’t take significant luck to get the tiles you need to make a quick strike on your opponent.
= 4
= 7
= 11
Bad Pop Culture Reference Section
Some great news for everyone who got a chance to read Rachel Sklar’s excellent breakdown of the Release the Kraken meme: ZEUS beats BIEBER in the Scrabble test. If that’s not good news from the universe, I don’t know what is.
= 13
= 10
Scrabble Scoring courtesy of my new favorite tool, Kate Spanos’ Scrabble Calculator.
