Scrabble bible accepts ‘lolz’ and ‘ridic’ as words

Do you know your bezzy from your cakeages?
A Scrabble playerA Scrabble player
A Scrabble player

From now on the slang terms for best mate and charges in a restaurant for serving cake brought in from outside - could boost your score at Scrabble.

Words such as ridic and lotsa have also been included in the latest official bible for players of the world’s favourite word board game.

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Devo, onesie and vape are among thousands of new entries that have been added to the official Scrabble word list.

Collins, which publishes the list of all words that can be used by Scrabble players, has just added a further 6,500 to the existing line up of 250,000.

Words used on social media, in texts and on the street are now available to fans of the traditional game.

Lolz (laughs) has made its debut as has tweep (person who uses Twitter) and tuneage (music).

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Others reflect modern society, trends and events, such as devo (devolution, as in devo-max), vape (to puff an e-cigarette), onesie (all-in-one suit) and twerking (hip-gyrating dance).

For the most competitive Scrabblers, the highest-scoring new words may be the most important. These include quinzhee (an Inuit snow shelter – 29 points) and checkbox (28).

Helen Newstead, head of language content at Collins, said: “Dictionaries have always included formal and informal English, but it used to be hard to find printed evidence of the use of slang words,”

“Now people use slang in social media posts, tweets, blogs, comments and text messages.”

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The board game was invented in 1933 by American architect Alfred Mosher Butts. It was originally known as Lexiko and then Criss Cross Words. Scrabble as we know it was born in 1948.

The game has reached a new band of modern players, with digital versions available online and as downloadable apps.