Scrabble for answers as game changes leave players lost for words

The history of Scrabble isn’t exactly littered with tales of violent rivalries and mid-match fisticuffs. In fact, while its origins are American, it is a very British kind of board game.

However, the respectful hush which normally characterises even the tensest of head to heads is under threat and the rumbles of discontent are growing louder by the day.

The seeds of the unrest lay with changes Mattel announced to its Facebook version of the game a couple of weeks ago. The company promised a “new improved” app, but within hours of going live an army of avid players were for once lost for words.

“Scrabble is a game that is much loved by millions of people throughout the world, it stands up there alongside chess and backgammon,” says John Lewis, a 50-year-old from Sheffield, who played his first game back in the mid 1970s and who has been playing online for years. “Mattel had said it was going to change the online game, but no one envisioned what happened next.”

Overnight the new version wiped not only the playing history of 3.5 million online members, but crucially it also deleted their contact lists. It was a move Mattel no doubt thought would elicit no more than a few disgruntled postings and a handful of emails. The company was deluged.

“I know it sounds trivial, but it’s not,” says John, who has set up an online petition calling for Mattel to reinstate the old format. At the last count it had received more than 4,800 signatures.

“There was a huge social side to the game. Over the years people had made friendships all over the world, but without warning those contacts disappeared. In other cases it was a really lovely way for relatives, who live thousands of miles apart, to keep in touch. The changes mean you can’t choose who you play, you just get presented with a random partner. It has destroyed the social side of the game which was incredibly important for a lot of people. It also means that now you can get a complete novice being pitted against someone who considers themselves a serious player, which is incredibly frustrating on both sides.”

Since the protest – fuelled at least in part by an unhappy contingent of silver surfers – Mattel has tried to placate its Scrabble members. A statement issued by the company acknowledged that some players were unhappy with the new version, but stopped short of a U-turn and instead thanked members for their loyalty.

“I don’t know whether the company has been surprised by the reaction, but there is a real strength of feeling out there and we are not going to be fobbed off with empty words,” says John, who along with thousands of players across the world is now boycotting Scrabble on Facebook. Certainly the comments left on the social networking site, which variously describe the changes as “garish”, “cumbersome” and “ruinous”, suggest that all is not well among the online Scrabble community.

“For the past five years I’ve been playing for an hour every evening after work,” says Helen Jones, from Southport who is also helping to marshal support in the UK. “I’ve met some really interesting people. Of course they do not substitute friends, but we had a community.

“They are waking a sleeping lion by doing this. Our protest is growing in momentum.”

A beautiful game, it seems, just turned ugly.

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