Grammar girl here. Today's episode is for all-you Scrabble Adults out there, or for those

who want to hear about some weird words.

If you play Scrabble on your phone, whether against the computer or another person, you've

probably found yourself exclaiming, but that's not a word after your opponent played something

like, ka or zah. Yes, apparently these are real words, and they are allowed in Scrabble.

Let's get to the bottom of it. Scrabble was invented during the Great Depression by

an architect named Alfred Mosher Butts. In case you've never played, it's a game in which

you connect letters to make words and earn as many points as possible. All the letters

of the alphabet are represented, but some appear more often than others. For example, there

are 12 E's, but only one Q. After coming up with the concept of the game, Alfred needed

to figure out the ideal distribution of letters so that the game would evolve skill and

chance, but not be too easy. To see how often each letter was used in English, he studied

the front page of the New York Times. His analysis ended up being quite accurate. His original

tile distribution is still valid today. Over the years, the official Scrabble Dictionary

has evolved, and a dictionary committee maintains the word list. These days, it's

Merriam Webster's official Scrabble Player's Dictionary 4th edition, known as the OSPD4.

But for club internament play, it's the official tournament and club word list, second edition,

Owl 2 or OWL 2, also published by Merriam Webster.

Let's look at the official word list a little more closely. According to Hasbro, the maker

of Scrabble, quote, all words labeled as a part of speech, including those listed

of foreign origin and as archaic, obsolete, colloquial, and slang, etc., are permitted

with the exception of the following. Words always capitalized, abbreviations, prefixes

...