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The cast is sitting around playing Scrabble. Someone plays a nonsense word and gets called on it. Cheater will be forced to come up with a definition on the spot.
If the writers know something about Scrabble, expect the word to contain copious amounts of the five-, eight- and 10-point letter tiles: K, J, X, Q and Z. But let's ignore the fact that actual English language Scrabble sets only contain one each of those tiles. A similar game, Bananagrams, contains two each of those consonants.
Usually, but not always, a Sit Com trope. Named after a word Bart makes up during a Simpson family Scrabble game.
Subtrope of Neologism. See also Perfectly Cromulent Word.
Incidentally, the example at left doesn't work (even assuming that Lovecraft isn't lying) because proper names are forbidden.
Examples:
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Fan Fic
- Undocumented Features has Lying Bastard Scrabble. Here is a forum post about it.
Gryphon: In the pure form of LBS, no real words are allowed, and a player accidentally making up a word that can be proven real is disqualified.
Film
- In Sneakers, The Chick tries to play the word "scrunchy" and describes it as "you know what happens to your face? Right now, your face is scrunchy."
- Of course, "scrunchy" is a real word, though some people might be more familiar with the spelling "scrunchie".
- Subverted somewhat in King Ralph: When Ralph and Miranda are playing Scrabble during their first date, Ralph plays the simple word "yo". When Miranda objects, saying that there's no such word, Ralph replies, "Are you crazy? I use it all the time! You don't have to look it up. We're using the King's English, right? If I say it, it's a word."
- Oddly enough, the rules for Scrabble do state that you can use slang...
- One scene in the indie drama Snow Cake involves a game of "comic book word Scrabble", a variant in which made-up words are totally allowed as long as they sound reasonably comic-book-ish and the player can use them in a sentence. Words played during the game include "baang", "yaamool", and "dazlious".
- Ken Park features a scene in which one rather sociopathic character's grandfather tries playing the word "sipi" in a Scrabble game, arguing that it's a part of the body below the hips. This results in the outraged grandson throwing the table and declaring himself the winner and later murdering his grandparents.
Literature
- In Watchers by Dean Koontz, a significant shift in Nora's personality and her relationship with Travis is signaled by her joking with him by playing such fictitious words as "dofnup" (she claims it's a logger's nightcap) and "hurkey" (claiming it's a dish made with both ham and turkey).
- The short story "Scrabble With God", by John M. Ford, uses this trope with a twist. "It isn't that he cheats, exactly." But any word he plays is a real word — even if it wasn't a minute ago. And he's not above uncreating things in order to be able to challenge his opponents' words, either...
- One of Dave Barry's columns ("Wheel of Misfortune") talks about how he's bad at Scrabble and often makes words up. When asked to use the word "doot" in a sentence, his reply is "Look! A doot!" He later claims that the answer to a Wheel Of Fortune puzzle contained this word.
- In The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass aged 37¾, Leonard Thynn uses "vquex", which he insists is defined in the full length Oxford Dictionary as "a cross between a ferret and a giraffe". Gerald objects on the grounds that the required mating act would be geometrically impossible.
Live Action TV
- Friends: Phoebe tries to play "scrunchy", Ross uses "garge" (which he claims is a nautical term), and Chandler uses "fligament". ...But scrunchy's a word... Which is the joke: They don't believe her.
- Seinfeld - "Quone": "To quone something!" Upon not finding it in the dictionary, Kramer explains that it's a medical term: "A patient gets difficult, you quone him!"
- Will And Grace - "Spramp": "Every morning I... spramp my face with cold water. (...)The bubbles from a Jacuzzi spramp up. Note how the sea spramps off the jagged rocks."
- Red Dwarf - "jozxyqk": a Cat word meaning "the sound you make when you get your sexual organs trapped in something."
Lister: "Is it in the dictionary?"
Cat: "It might be, if you were reading it in the nude and closed the book too fast."
- Having been in the situation himself, This Troper can confirm that "jozxyqk" is the precise word you would use to express yourself.
- Little Britain - "cupboardy" (Kenny Craig hypnotizes his mother to believe that "cupboardy" is a valid word.)
- Frasier - "Quilty": "Her grandmother's bed was warm and... quilty."
- Home Improvement:
Randy: Melonology?!
Brad: It's the study of melons!
Mark: There's no such word as "melonology"!
Brad: Sure there is! Call the fruit section of the grocery store.
Randy: Who should I ask for? The melonologist?
(later...)
Jill: "Melonology"?
Tim: Yeah, it's the study of guys named Mel!
- Psych
Henry: Not a word.
Shawn: Fergulous.
Henry: I said not a word!
Shawn: Oh, I see, last week when we were playing Scrabble it was not a word, but this week, when it's convenient for you, it is a word.
- Malcolm In The Middle had Francis scamming Craig at Scrabble by claiming that everything was a "military term". He later retaliated:
"And I'm pretty sure 'myzsrec' is spelled with a 'k'!"
- Spaced had a variant in that the words weren't made up, just extremely dubious. They included "Shazam" and "Pro-V" ("That's not a word, it's something they made up to make shampoo sound important").
- In a rare dramatic use of this trope, CSI featured a player who used nonword "exvin" in a tournament for a Scrabble Fictional Counterpart game as a bluff. He then added insult to injury; when the opponent added an S to create "exvins", the first player challenged and had the tiles and points removed. This annoyed the opponent enough to murder him by shoving the tiles down his throat.
- In a bit of Fridge Logic, Catherine showed that the word "vixen" could be spelled with the same letters, though had he played the valid word he couldn't have screwed his opponent on adding the "S", so it's possible he did it intentionally.
- In Ellen, Adam is called on his use of the word "susurrus". It turns out to be a real word, but not for a kind of dinosaur as he claimed.
- Not a Scrabble example, but there was an old MTV mockumentary about a boy band (2ge+her) in which said boy band hosted a spelling bee where that word came up. When asked to use it in a sentence, they produced: "Hey, man: check out that sussurrus."
- In an episode of The Golden Girls, Sophia plays the word "disdam". When Dorothy asks her to use it in a sentence, she says, "You're no good at disdam game!"
- Family Ties - Dad Steve puts down "zoquo", Greek for water sports. When Alex is accused of hoarding the U's so nobody can use a Q (which doesn't make sense; a normal Scrabble set contains only one Q, which already would be in "zoquo"), he puts down "ushnuu".
Alex: Yeah, it's Greek for... towel off.
Steve: Use it in a sentence.
Alex: After I zoquo I like to ushnuu.
- Subverted in the British Sit Com Grownups: Claire and Grant are playing Scrabble and the former ends the game with the word "fadge". Grant demands Claire to use it in a sentence and Claire says "I beat Grant at Scrabble using the word 'fadge'." Unconvinced, Grant checks the dictionary... and it turns out to be a real word.
- Subverted in Roseanne, when dumb guy Mark puts down the word 'oxygen'. The others convince him that this is not a word but an abbreviation so that it will fit on those tanks. When he asks why they don't print it vertically they tell him it's illegal. He is convinced and puts down the word 'it' instead.
- Subverted in Becker:
Bob: Xebec?
Jake: Yeah, xebec.
Bob: That's not a word.
Jake: Sure it is. It's an antiquated, tri-masted Grecian vessel.
Bob: None of those are words!
- Doubly subverted in ALF; Alf plays the word "quidnunc". Everyone challenges him, but the word exists (it's a term, originally from Latin, for a gossip), although it's not what Alf thought it was (a person who wears meat). Since they all challenged, Alf gets an Extra Turn: He turns the word into "quidnuncle", a relative who wears meat.
- Parodied in the French-Canadian series "Le Coeur à Ses Raisons". Brett and Criquette are playing a friendly game of scrabble. Criquette places the letters "W-Q-T" to spell the word "Waquetue", a (fictious) nocturnal aquatic animal. Brett spells the word "quixict" (QXTC), also a nocturnal aquatic animal. Criquett then adds an "s" to "QXTC" to spell the word "helicopter"... yeah.
- Not really a straightforward example, but in an episode of Yes Dear, Jimmy attempts to play "Cheeto", but misspells it as "Cheato". Kim (having obviously never played Banjo Kazooie) calls him on his spelling error and said he couldn't use it anyway because it was a brand name for a snack food. Jimmy then challenges her earlier play of "ritzy".
- Also, a couple minutes later, he asks if "gloonge" is a word.
- Subverted in NCIS - Tim is winning a scrabble game by a lot of points, and smugly remarks "It's going to be awfully difficult to play that Q without a U." Of course, Ziva plays it as "Qi" in such a good place that she wins the game, with Timothy still arguing that it isn't a word. Of course, he has to say that considering he's a published author who just got beaten by someone who speaks English (badly) as a seventh language.
- As Time Goes By (Series 5, Episode 1) - After disagreements over furzes and an attempt to change cottage to pottage, Jean places flug and claims it's Old English.
- M*A*S*H did this as a throwaway joke during one of the earlier episodes. Hawkeye tried to play the word "valeness," explaining that it meant "to be full of vale, vale-y".
Henry Blake: Valeness? What does that mean?
Trapper: It means he's losing Henry, take that off.
- Inverted in an episode of That70s Show, where Midge was unable to realize that she had the word "zygotes" spelled out in order in her... tile-holding thingamajig.
Magazines
- In Quest once had an article which documented a three-day marathon of gaming by five editors. The last game was Scrabble. Since it was being played by sleep-deprived professional geeks, "words" like ROUS became very common with no one being called out. Also, the geek-friendly "CTHULHU" and the slightly more dubious "URMFGA."
- Back when Gary Gygax did a monthly column for Dragon magazine, he related an incident involving the word "quij".
Newspaper Comics
- In Calvin And Hobbes, Calvin plays "Zqfmgb" on a Double Word Score box for 957 points.
Hobbes: "Zqfmgb" isn't a word! It doesn't even have a vowel! Calvin: It is so a word! It's a worm found in New Guinea! Everyone knows that! Hobbes: I'm looking it up. Calvin: You do, and I'll look up that 12-letter word you played with all the X's and J's!" Hobbes: ...what's your score for "zqfmgb"?
- In another strip, Calvin somehow scores 2 points by playing the word "be", despite the letter B being worth three points. It's possible that the B could have been a blank that had previously been placed next to a double letter score on which he played the E; however, he'd complained that all his letters were consonants, so it's more likely that Watterson simply Did Not Do The Research.
- There was a Mother Goose and Grimm cartoon that showed Grimm and Attilla playing Scrabble. Grimm challenged Attilla when he played the word "meow". The point being that Grimm is a dog and Attila is a cat.
- Fox Trot: "What does H-O-H spell?" "Water?"
- Slightly justified in that the atomic formula for water is indeed HOH (H20).
- After a long dry spell in a game, Wally of Stone Soup puts down "Zuccini" [sic] on a double-word score. He defends himself by saying that's how it's spelled at the produce stand, only to be told "They also sell 'onyons' and 'bokays'."
Webcomics
Western Animation
- The Simpsons is the Trope Namer, with "Kwyjibo": "Uh... a big, dumb, balding North American ape. With no chin." "And a short temper." Admittedly those were pretty lousy letters.
- Inverted in the same episode, where Homer complains of having a bad set of tiles — that spell out "oxidize." Oddly, unlike many examples, combining both these "words" into a single game is still entirely possible with the rarity of certain letters.
- The Critic: Extremely rich guy Duke makes up the word "qzybuk", and when Marty calls him on it, Duke phones Noah Webster himself (ignoring the fact the man has been dead for 150 years) and bribes them to make it a real word. Which he did, with a definition he made up on the spot ("How about...a big problem?"). Another character uses the word later in the same episode.
Duke: How about that other word I invented, "Duke-licious"? No one's using it? What a Duke-tastrophe.
- It might be noticed that the writer for The Critic, Jon Vitti, also wrote the The Simpsons "Kwyjibo" episode (Bart the Genius), making it a bit of a Recycled Joke.
- The Dilbert cartoon does it when Dilbert is forced to defeat a supercomputer at Scrabble. Subverted by the fact that the computer hacks into various online dictionaries and inserts the word "wipqozn" into society.
- In another instance, Dogbert cheats by using a wood burner to make counterfeit tiles. Although the word he plays is an actual word ("Quizzing"), there's only one Z in a Scrabble set, as Dilbert himself points out.
- That's the sort of think that allowed him to lose 188 games in a row...
- Also subverted when Dilbert tries to play "it". Dogbert challenges, and wins because the dictionary in which they look "it" up was published by Dilbert's company and actually does not contain the word.
- They did it in the comic too, though subverted. Dogbert played "neans".
Dilbert: Neans is not a word.
Dogbert: I know, but I wanted to get rid of some N's.
- This may actually play off the author's real life issues with the game, thanks to his mother.
It wasn't until college that I learned Webster did not make any last-minute additions to the dictionary. To this day, I still wonder if headbutting is legal in Scrabble.
- Played with in Taz-Mania, where Taz makes a weird word, with symbols that aren't even in Scrabble pieces, but when he was called on it, it actually was in the dictionary.
- An episode of The Flintstones opens with Fred playing Scrabble against Arnold the paper boy, and trying to pass off "zarf" as a word.
- "Zarf" is an antiquated Victorian word describing an ornamental cup holder for a hot cup without a handle. Just so you know.
- Inverted in Stickin Around where the bored kids bust out 'Squabble', where they must use anything that isn't a word.
- In the American Dad episode "Stan Knows Best", the family is playing Scrabble. Roger the alien tries to play "quivecs".
Steve: Quivecs? That's not a word!
Roger: It is on my planet.
Francine: Is it a proper noun?
Roger scowls and withdraws his tiles.
- In the Metalocalypse episode "Klokblocked", the guys (minus Nathan) are playing Scrabble. Skwisgaar plays the word quhzk.
Skwisgaar:...Ok, this is a words? Q-U-H-Zs-K?
Toki: Quhzks! That's whats the ducks says!
Real Life
- The ZX Spectrum version of Scrabble had a fairly restricted dictionary, due to reasons of space; allegedly it cut out some of the simpler words so the computer could play more complex ones. This resulted in illegal moves not being rejected, but the computer asking the user to confirm whether he was playing a valid word. Which he was. Every time. Honest. What do you mean "QXWWVAR" isn't a word?
- Depressingly, this is also true of the late-nineties-early-noughties mobile phone game: It won't check anthing over six letters. Two Triple Word Scores, you say?
- To make things even more fun, there's at least one PC version of Scrabble that saves the words you confirm as being valid into its dictionary. Have fun when the AI plays "qxwwvar" against you...
- Oxyphenbutazone. (Which is also an aversion: It is, in fact, a word listed in the official Scrabble tournament dictionaries.)
- And if you were wondering, it's a metabolite of a veterinary anti-inflammatory drug, most often used to treat horses.
- See if this puzzle from the MIT Mystery Hunt isn't within your grasp.
- The band Foghat was named after an attempt at a KWYJIBO by one of its members.
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