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Scrabble Bans Hundreds Of Slurs And Bigoted Words From Its Game

Scrabble is making some much-needed updates to its rules. Per the New York Post, players of the board game can no longer get points for spelling out racial or ethnic…

Scrabble Bans Hundreds Of Slurs And Bigoted Words From Its Game

23 Aug 1999: A game of Scrabble in progress during the Mind Sports Olympiad at Olympia in London. Mandatory Credit: John Gichigi /Allsport

John Gichigi /Allsport

Scrabble is making some much-needed updates to its rules. Per the New York Post, players of the board game can no longer get points for spelling out racial or ethnic slurs.

In total, 236 bigoted words were removed from the official Scrabble word list used at tournaments. The first word that was removed: The N-word.

In a statement about the decision, The North American Scrabble Players Association CEO states, "Removing slurs is the very least that we can do to make our association more inclusive. How can we in this day tell prospective members that they can only play with us if they accept that offensive slurs have no meaning when played on a board?"

Sadly, many members of the 10,000 person group had conflicting opinions about the decision. "Some members threatened to leave the association if a single word were removed; others threatened to leave the association if any offensive words remained. There were a lot of good and bad arguments on both sides."