History Main / ScrabbleBabble

A RulesLawyer may note that even according to official Scrabble rules, players are still technically ''allowed'' to play such words -- you just have to pay a points penalty [[NotCheatingUnlessYouGetCaught if your opponent challenges them]]. Also, contrary to the trope, asking an opponent to actually ''define'' a challenged word is considered bad form in high-level play; tournament Scrabble players are [[SeriousBusiness too busy memorizing huge lists of allowed words]] to bother with trivial things like what the words mean. (Case in point: the French world championship was won by a man who ''[[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33606449 didn't speak French]]''.) It also doesn't ''have'' to [[Administrivia/TropesAreFlexible specifically be Scrabble they're playing]]; it could also be Boggle, the aforementioned Bananagrams, VideoGame/BookwormAdventures, or whatever.

'''Durant:''' When I get back to base it's coming off the board!\\
'''Wolcott:''' You touch my "limo" and I'll spank you, Night Stalker.\\

* Parodied in the French-Canadian series ''Series/LeCoeurASesRaisons". Brett and Criquette are playing a friendly game of scrabble. Criquette places the letters "W-Q-T" to spell the word "Waquetue", a (fictitious) 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"...

'''Cat:''' It might be if you were reading it in the nude and [[GroinAttack closed the book too fast]].

-->-- '''Bart Simpson''', ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''

** In the Valentines-at-the-lake episode, Stan tries to kwyjibo, but gets caught and passes. He's holding 2 blanks and can spell "take" "smokes" "to" "skank" (which he just did/needs to do).

-->'''Shaq:''' See, I told ya so.

* In one ''ComicStrip/{{Dilbert}}'' strip (September 8, 1989), Dogbert plays the word 'neans', not for the points, but simply to get rid of some N's. Dilbert responds with "[[{{Pun}} The N's don't justify the 'neans',]]" and Dogbert responds "[[OverlyPrepreparedGag I just wanted to hear you say that.]]"

:: Another way the accusation doesn't make sense is that there are several legitimate Scrabble plays which are derived from Arabic and contain Q which is not followed by U (suq, qat, qadi, etc. -- although these are more commonly spelled "souk", "khat" and "cadi" respectively, the Q-forms are all listed in ''Official Scrabble Words''). There is also the legitimate word tranq (short for tranquilizer; it fails spell check, but it passes in Scrabble), and more recently, qi (a ''feng shui'' term, sometimes spelled "chi").

* Subverted in ''Series/{{Becker}}'', when Jake plays 'Xebec':
-->'''Bob:''' I still say that's not a word.\\

** Earlier in the same game, Bob complains about his useless letters - "J! A! C! K! A! S! S!" - and has them exchanged. Reggie tells him, "You had a word! 'Jackass'!" Bob [[ComicallyMissingThePoint replies]], "Hey, I'm doing the best I can, moron!"

* Not really a straightforward example, but in an episode of ''Series/YesDear'', Jimmy attempts to play "Cheeto", but misspells it as "Cheato". Kim (having obviously never played ''VideoGame/BanjoKazooie'') calls him on his spelling error and said he couldn't use it anyway because it was a brand name for snack food. Jimmy then challenges her earlier play of "ritzy" on the same merits.
** Also, a couple of minutes later, he asks if "gloonge" is a word.
* Subverted in ''Series/{{NCIS}}'' - Tim is winning a scrabble game by a lot of points, and [[SmugSnake smugly remarks]]: "[[TemptingFate 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.
** Well, [[{{Malaproper}} Hollywood]] [[BluntMetaphorsTrauma Badly]].

* ''Series/{{Mash}}'' did this as a throwaway joke during one of the earlier episodes. Hawkeye tries to play the word "vailness", defining it as "a quality of vail; the act of vailing; to be full of vaily."

* ''Series/ThreesCompany'' - Jack plays the word "Zixik" and claims that it means "an Abyssinian nose-flute."

* ''Series/TheITCrowd'': Moss successfully plays "TNETENNBA" on an episode of ''Series/{{Countdown}}''.
** A real Countdown contestant referenced this when he wore a T-shirt with the line "Good morning, that's a nice TNETENNBA" on it. [[http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/good-morning-thats-a-nice-tnetennba-countdown-hero-wears-it-crowd-tshirt-onair-9868172.html]]

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', with "Kwyjibo": "[[TakeThat Uh... a big, dumb, balding North American ape. With no chin. ...And a short temper.]]" (Homer then becomes angry and threatens to hurt Bart, prompting Bart to quip: [[StealthInsult "Uh-oh, kwyjibo on the loose!"]]) Admittedly those were pretty lousy letters.
** The letters would actually be fine - the bigger problem is that Marge, Homer, and Lisa had been playing 2 and 3-letter words and didn't leave him much to work with.
** Inverted in the same episode, where Homer complains of having a bad set of tiles -- that spell out (albeit incorrectly) "oxidize." Oddly, unlike many examples, combining both these "words" into a single game is still entirely possible with the rarity of certain letters.
** However, the score given is incorrect, as pointed out [[http://www.snpp.com/episodes/7G02.html here]].

* ''WesternAnimation/TheCritic'': Extremely rich guy Duke makes up the word "quyzbuk", 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.

** 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 [[RecycledScript Recycled Joke]].
* The ''WesternAnimation/{{Dilbert}}'' cartoon does it when Dilbert is forced to defeat a supercomputer at Scrabble. The computer just orders Asok to lay out all its tiles, then hacks into various online dictionaries and inserts, for example, 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 thing that allowed him to lose 188 games in a row...
** Also inverted when Dilbert tries to play "it". Dogbert challenges and ''wins'' because the dictionary in which they look "it" up was published by [[IncompetenceInc 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.
-->'''Dilbert:''' [[IncrediblyLamePun The N's don't justify the neans.]]
-->'''Dogbert:''' [[OverlyPreparedGag I just wanted to hear you say that.]]

-->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.

* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheFlintstones'' opens with Fred playing Scrabble against Arnold the paperboy, 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.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'' 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 ''WesternAnimation/TUFFPuppy'' episode "Share-A-Lair"

-->''Snaptrap grabs a blaster and fires at Larry''

** And like the example from ''The Critic'', this word was used later in the episode.
* While ruling over an abandoned earth, WesternAnimation/PinkyAndTheBrain play scrabble in the white-house.

-->'''Brain:''' ''(Adds an s)'' There. Chramecirums. Now ''that's'' a word. And a triple word score to boot.
*** Even though, if chramecirum were a real Latin word, the plural would be ''chramecira''...

* Also happens when playing with foreign sets. Even if the alphabets shared are exactly the same, the distribution of letters will make playing by any realistic means incredibly difficult - see also; Welsh, and only two Y tiles in English Scrabble sets (which is still one more than the French set has).
** This is why English-language Scrabble bans foreign words unless they've been adopted into English ''and'' can be used in sentences without reference to the foreign culture. Were this rule not in place, a competitor could easily play the romanized rendering of a word from the Hmong Daw language of a minority group in Vietnam (which contains words with all consonant sounds, and pretty obscure ones too), and it would count.

-->"'The word is 'DRIZZAH', D-R-I-Z-Z-A-H, triple ''word''.' 'Yeah, I'm gonna have to challenge that one, Jay... let me consult my ''dictionizzah''. First of all, it's not a word. Second of all, [[http://static.musictoday.com/store/bands/2116/product_large/4ICT05.JPG one of your Zs is a sideways N]]."

* ''ComicStrip/ShermansLagoon'': [[http://shermanslagoon.com/comics/november-27-2007/ While hiding in Hawthorne's crab hole during a typhoon]], Sherman and Fillmore try to get their minds off the rising tension by playing Scrabble. Fillmore puts down the word "BLSTRCHTX" - which according to him is the noise that Sherman makes when he snores.

** And then called back in a later ad in which Shaq takes his opponents into the desert, and actually shows them a Shaqtus... a cactus with Shaq's face and number carved on it. And it has a definition: "Shaqtus" a cactus native to[[note]]teams Shaq had played for at the time[[/note]] Arizona[[note]]Phoenix Suns[[/note]], Southern California[[note]]Los Angeles Lakers[[/note]] and Florida[[note]]Orlando Magic, Miami Heat[[/note]]. [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers And Ohio]][[note]] Cleveland Cavaliers[[/note]].

If the writers know something about Scrabble, expect the word to contain copious amounts of the high-scoring consonant tiles (J, K, Q, X, and Z) or a full rack of seven tiles. [[RuleOfFunny Let's ignore the fact]] that [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrabble_letter_distributions#English actual English-language Scrabble sets]] only contain one each of those tiles (the game's wildcards, the two blank tiles, are worth no points on their own). A similar game, [[http://www.bananagrams.com/ Bananagrams]], contains two each of those consonants.

* Subverted in ''Series/{{Becker}}'':
-->'''Bob:''' ''Xebec?''\\
'''Jake:''' Yeah, xebec.\\
'''Bob:''' That's not a word.\\
'''Jake:''' Sure it is. It's an antiquated, tri-masted Grecian vessel. (''which is the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xebec actual definition]]'')\\

*** [[FridgeBrilliance But then again, this show does take place several million years before the Victorian era]] (unless all those theories that it's actually AfterTheEnd are true).

'''Cat:''' It might be if you were reading it in the nude and closed the book too fast.

* Inversion: [[WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes Bugs Bunny]] plays around with Napoleon Bonaparte's battle plan models and quips "Hey Nappy, this has Scrabble beat a mile. You oughta patent it!"

* 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 they were playing a valid word. Which they were. Every time. Honest. What do you mean "QXWWVAR" isn't a word?
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBxWE84_7Nw#t=4m44s the ZX Spectrum version wasn't the only version...]]
** Depressingly, this is also true of the late-nineties-early-naughties mobile phone game: It won't check anything 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. [[http://www.techtales.com/tftechs.php?m=200607#8854 Have fun when the AI plays "qxwwvar" against you...]]
** Now long since averted, as all modern digital incarnations of Scrabble run on platforms easily capable of referencing the entire list of officially allowed words.
*** To be more specific: For example, the official sowpods word list (used in scrabble tournaments) contains 267751 words and is over 2.5 megabytes big. Even with some clever compression technique (that still allows the program to check the validity of a word quickly), you are looking at at least a megabyte of memory consumption or more. This was unthinkable in the '80s and largely in the '90s, and even longer for mobile platforms.

A RulesLawyer may note that even according to official Scrabble rules, players are still technically ''allowed'' to play such words -- you just have to pay a points penalty [[NotCheatingUnlessYouGetCaught if your opponent challenges them]]. Also, contrary to the trope, asking an opponent to actually ''define'' a challenged word is considered bad form in high level play; tournament Scrabble players are [[SeriousBusiness too busy memorizing huge lists of allowed words]] to bother with trivial things like what the words mean. (Case in point: the French world championship was won by a man who ''[[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33606449 didn't speak French]]''.) It also doesn't ''have'' to [[Administrivia/TropesAreFlexible specifically be Scrabble they're playing]]; it could also be Boggle, the aforementioned Bananagrams, VideoGame/BookwormAdventures, or whatever.

* In an NBA on ESPN commercial, Shaquille O'Neal is dominating a game of Scrabble. The (then) Phoenix Suns center baffles NBA analysts Stuart Scott and Mike Breen with words like "Shaqtastic" and "Shaqtus". The presence of so many Q's is [[LampshadeHanging challenged by the anchors]]. Additional humor in that he breaks almost every rule. Multiple turns in a row, words that aren't actually connected to each other, incomplete "words", and words that are far too long to be played at once. The shot of the game board doubles as a FreezeFrameBonus.

** Now that he's an analyst for TNT, one can only ''hope'' this will get a follow up.

* One of French comedian Pierre Palmade's sketches depicts a game of Scrabble with his wife and son, coming up with such words as "KAWAX" and "WAKER". (Note that "W" is one of the highest scoring letters in French Scrabble, unlike in the English version.)

* In ''ComicBook/GenerationX'' #2, Skin and Husk play Scrabble; Skin plays the word "BXLOMRMLEZQ" for 375 points. Husk humors him and doesn't challenge, though she does bring it up later when they have an argument about which of them is smarter.

** In another strip, Calvin somehow scores 2 points by playing the word "be", despite the letter B being worth three points in Scrabble. (It's technically possible that the B could have been a blank, and he played the 'E' on a double-score tile, but who's counting?) Hobbes counters with "Nucleoplasm", which ''is'' a real word, but it's left unclear how he could spell an 11-letter word in a single turn. (It's possible he could have prefixed "nucleo" to an existing "plasm" on the board, but [[PlayedForLaughs that's not important]].) Hobbes' play is illegal in another way: first he plays "xygomorphic", Calvin uses the I to play "in", then Hobbes uses the N to play "nucleoplasm". This results in Hobbes spelling "cu", which isn't a word and therefore invalidates "nucleoplasm" by default. Considering he makes up his own Chance cards for Monopoly, they could be using house rules. That or Calvin, being six years old, doesn't understand the rules entirely.

* One scene in the indie drama ''Film/SnowCake'' 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".

* The short story "Scrabble With God", by Creator/JohnMFord, 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 ''un''creating things in order to be able to challenge His opponents' words, either...

* In ''Literature/TheSacredDiaryOfAdrianPlass aged 37¾'', [[TheDitz 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 physically impossible.

'''Cat:''' It might be, if you were reading it in the nude and closed the book too fast.

:: Another way the accusation doesn't make sense is that there are several legitimate Scrabble plays which are derived from Arabic and contain Q which is not followed by U (suq, qat, qadi etc. -- although these are more commonly spelled "souk", "khat" and "cadi" respectively, the Q-forms are all listed in ''Official Scrabble Words''). There is also the perfectly legitimate word tranq (short for tranquilizer; it fails spell check, but it passes in Scrabble), and more recently, qi (a ''feng shui'' term, sometimes spelled "chi").

* Parodied in the French-Canadian series ''Series/LeCoeurASesRaisons". 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"...
* Not really a straightforward example, but in an episode of ''Series/YesDear'', Jimmy attempts to play "Cheeto", but misspells it as "Cheato". Kim (having obviously never played ''VideoGame/BanjoKazooie'') 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" on the same merits.
** Also, a couple minutes later, he asks if "gloonge" is a word.

* ''Series/KanalK'', an Argentinian version of the British ''Series/SpittingImage'', had the likeness of then president Menem playing Scrabble with other character and making up words based in his known extensively publicized verbal blunders. One of his words is ''"esnesario"'' (he famously mangled to this the phrase "es necesario") an other is ''"latoye"'' (his daughter's then boyfriend was the soccer player Latorre, and the mangled result was the way he pronounced the name due to his being from La Rioja province).

* In a scene on ''Series/TheSketchShow'', Lee Mack's tactic is to slip his made up words into the conversation and explain what they mean before his turn starts. First is "quazoosl", referring to someone being so good looking they become intimidating (the example he gives is Elizabeth Hurley). In a later sketch, he offers Tim Vine a glass of "saxisquith". Tim replies, "Don't even think about it."

* ''Radio/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'' primary phase ends with Arthur Dent trying to teach Scrabble to the caveman in order to help them evolve. "The only word they know is 'grunt' and they can't spell it right." Arthur and Ford Prefect use the letters from the Scrabble bag as a random element in coaxing the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe and Everything (the answer being 42, which the caveman has pointed out on the board).

** The letters would actually be fine - the bigger problem is that Marge, Homer and Lisa had been playing 2 and 3-letter words and didn't leave him much to work with.

** Also inverted when Dilbert tries to play "it". Dogbert challenges, and ''wins'' because the dictionary in which they look "it" up was published by [[IncompetenceInc Dilbert's company]] and actually does not contain the word.

** This may actually play off the author's real life issues with the game, thanks to his mother.

* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheFlintstones'' opens with Fred playing Scrabble against Arnold the paper boy, and trying to pass off "zarf" as a word.

*** To be more specific: For example the official sowpods word list (used in scrabble tournaments) contains 267751 words and is over 2.5 megabytes big. Even with some clever compression technique (that still allows the program to check the validity of a word quickly) you are looking at at least a megabyte of memory consumption or more. This was unthinkable in the 80s and largely in the 90s, and even longer for mobile platforms.
* [[http://oxyphenbutazone.ytmnd.com/ Oxyphenbutazone]]. (Which is also an aversion: It is, in fact, a word listed in the official Scrabble tournament dictionaries.) This could theoretically score [[http://www.scrabulizer.com/blog/post/3 1785 points]], if you can manage to snag three triple-word-scores ''at the same time'' with just seven tiles.

* The game Perquackey, in which players have to form words from a set of lettered dice, is actually named after one of its own kwyjibos.
* If you are ever so lucky as to get the right letters, "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syzygy_(astronomy) syzygies]]" and "syzygial" are very real word and is worth a maximum of 302 points. In case you were wondering, it's an astronomical term referring to a planetary alignment.

* There are a variety of alternate rule sets for Scrabble that encourage making up words. Some HouseRules allow a clearly-made up word if [[RuleOfFunny funny enough]] and in one varient, Lying Bastard Scrabble, players are penalized for playing words that can be found in the dictionary.

* KanalK, an Argentinian version of the British ''Series/SpittingImage'', had the likeness of then president Menem playing Scrabble with other character and making up words based in his known extensively publicized verbal blunders. One of his words is ''"esnesario"'' (he famously mangled to this the phrase "es necesario") an other is ''"latoye"'' (his daughter's then boyfriend was the soccer player Latorre, and the mangled result was the way he pronounced the name due to his being from La Rioja province).

* Inverted in an episode of ''Series/That70sShow'', where [[TheDitz Midge]] was unable to realize that she had the word "[[YouFailSexEdForever zygotes]]" spelled out ''in order'' in her... tile-holding thingamajig.

* Creator/HPLovecraft : [[http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v260/masta18/lovecraft_scrabble.jpg Scrabble Master]]

[[folder: Web Original]]

* Creator/HPLovecraft : [[http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v260/masta18/lovecraft_scrabble.jpg Scrabble Master]]

A RulesLawyer may note that even according to official Scrabble rules, players are still technically ''allowed'' to play such words -- you just have to pay a points penalty [[NotCheatingUnlessYouGetCaught if your opponent challenges them]]. Also, contrary to the trope, asking an opponent to actually ''define'' a challenged word is considered bad form in high level play; tournament Scrabble players are [[SeriousBusiness too busy memorizing huge lists of words]] to bother with trivial things like what the words mean. (Case in point: the French world championship was won by a man who ''[[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33606449 didn't speak French]]''.) It also doesn't ''have'' to [[Administrivia/TropesAreFlexible specifically be Scrabble they're playing]]; it could also be Boggle, the aforementioned Bananagrams, VideoGame/BookwormAdventures, or whatever.

-->"It's a word, [[BadLiar which by the way no longer exists,]] [[DiggingYourselfDeeper that refers to an... an object,]] [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment which by the way no longer exists...]]"

* Also happens when playing with foreign sets. Even if the alphabets shared are exactly the same, the distribution of letters will make playing by any realistic means incredibly difficult - see also; Welsh, and only two Y tiles in English Scrabble sets.

* Creator/BillEngvall talks about playing Scrabble with his wife. She creates words like "crepuscular" (which, for those interested, means "active at dawn and dusk"); the best he can do is "et."