Scrabble and culinary words

I was playing last weekend and made "pho". I convinced my opponent not to challenge me, saying it's a Vietnamese dish.

Well, I have the latest (fourth edition) Scrabble dictionary and pho isn't there. What really surprised me though, is that fricassee isn't there either. Well, at least goulash is there.

I wonder if any of you have had issues playing Scrabble. I know we all probably know a wealth of culinary words, and who knows if they should be valid or not (I mean, are they proper or not).

Maybe pho is capitalized. But fricassee?

I also got caught once with Brix - something from my wine geek days. I knew it was a measure of sugar in a liquid, but I wouldn't have dreamed it was proper. It is.

I can look up words in my dictionary if any of you are curious.

Do you play scrabble? What have you run into?

Nancy

Addicted to Words with Friends (and formerly The Romanian Internet Scrabble Club, which I still highly recommend).

Words that regularly annoy me for not being in the WWF dictionary: torta, bao, pho, masa, larb, buuz, plov.

Words I've played recently and thought about LTH each time: scape, feu, burgoo, za, bento, satay, pirog, carob, wat, ackee.

Don't ask me if any of these work or not in Scrabble - I stopped caring and memorizing at TWL06.

Fricassee would be a very hard or unlikely word to form (seven letter racks, and if "see" was already on the board I'm not sure why you'd burn another precious 's' to put six letters down without bingoing unless on the TW. It is accepted in WWF, FWIW).

Nancy S wrote:I was playing last weekend and made "pho". I convinced my opponent not to challenge me, saying it's a Vietnamese dish.

Well, I have the latest (fourth edition) Scrabble dictionary and pho isn't there. What really surprised me though, is that fricassee isn't there either. Well, at least goulash is there.

I wonder if any of you have had issues playing Scrabble. I know we all probably know a wealth of culinary words, and who knows if they should be valid or not (I mean, are they proper or not).

Maybe pho is capitalized. But fricassee?

I also got caught once with Brix - something from my wine geek days. I knew it was a measure of sugar in a liquid, but I wouldn't have dreamed it was proper. It is.

I can look up words in my dictionary if any of you are curious.

Do you play scrabble? What have you run into?

Nancy

Technically, it is not an english word. What would prevent people from using food names in other languages? If that was the case and I was playing with an international crowd, the game would get very complicated and out of hand.

Technically, it is not an english word. What would prevent people from using food names in other languages? If that was the case and I was playing with an international crowd, the game would get very complicated and out of hand.

This was my suspicion as well, at least regarding pho. I don't understand though why fricassee is not allowed, while other French derived words common in English like filet are.

rickster wrote:

Technically, it is not an english word. What would prevent people from using food names in other languages? If that was the case and I was playing with an international crowd, the game would get very complicated and out of hand.

This was my suspicion as well, at least regarding pho. I don't understand though why fricassee is not allowed, while other French derived words common in English like filet are.

Fricassee is indeed in TWL06 (a common Scrabble tournament wordlist, also published as a book) according to this site:

http://www.anagrammer.com/scrabble/

If it was not included in some shorter study lists or books, or previous dictionaries, it would not be because of its origin or diacritic (see my post above for many examples of foreign food words, or compare frisee, also accepted), but because of its length.

From "The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary Fourth Edition" by Merriam Webster (the book, perhaps used by casual to intermediate scrabble players like me:

Valid words from above posts:
torta(s) - an elaborate dessert
masa(s) - a dough made of dried corn
scape - to escape (a verb, so also (s), (ed), and (ing)
feu - to grand land under Scottish feudal law (a verb, so also (s), (ed), and (ing)
burgoo(s) - a thick oatmeal
za(s) - a pizza
bento(s) - obento - which is defined as a Japanese meal packed in a box
satay(s) - marinated meat that is skewered and broiled and dipped in peanut sauce
pirog - a large Russian pastry (also -rogen, -roghi or rogi)
carob(s) - and evergreen tree
wat(s) - a hare (also wet - then watter, and wattest)
ackee(s) - akee - which is a tropical tree
frisee(s) - curly leaves of endive

Not in there:
bao (baobab is there, a tropical tree), I don't know if that's similar
pho (not there at all)
larb
buuz
plov

Now, about the definitions - that dictionary admits it only puts one valid, short definition in there - it is not a good book for seeing what words mean, it's just good for scrabble.

Well, at least more were there than not.

I have to admit, I heard of pho, but not the other words on the list of what wasn't in the book.

I'm glad people aren't saying there are a lot of reasonably common French dishes are not in here.

I play a lot of scrabble on line and this is one of my regular pet peeves. You can convince a friend across a table but you can't convince an electronic dictionary that doesn't think the foreign word is now in common enough parlance to use.

For me it always seems to be words that were/are french but are also culinary and used all the time. Can I come up with an example right now? No, of course not -- my brain had a long day. But this is a common and annoying occurance.

I am, however, addicted to scrabble.

I am also addicted to Scrabble, and I'm yet unbeaten at home. Unfortunately, food terms don't come up for me that often.
We seem to have a nice Scrabble contingent going here. We should go someplace and play and chow together.

Pie Lady wrote:I am also addicted to Scrabble, and I'm yet unbeaten at home. Unfortunately, food terms don't come up for me that often.
We seem to have a nice Scrabble contingent going here. We should go someplace and play and chow together.

Love it! Just had a meal at Northdown Cafe in my 'hood (Lincoln and Melrose) that has good food, including a nice selection of veg options; an interesting beer selectiion and a perfect back room...when I saw it, I immediately thought that it was a great room for an activity like a game night or FF draft...

Pie Lady wrote:We seem to have a nice Scrabble contingent going here. We should go someplace and play and chow together.

Maybe we should play Food Scrabble?! Where you get extra points for playing a food related word?!

CrazyC wrote:

Pie Lady wrote:We seem to have a nice Scrabble contingent going here. We should go someplace and play and chow together.

Maybe we should play Food Scrabble?! Where you get extra points for playing a food related word?!

Even better!!!

We should post this as an event. Hooray! Scrabble buddies! Northtown Cafe sounds good to me...everybody else?

But we need a name...

how about: "LTHer is TOO a word: A foodcentric Scrabble Extravaganza!" If that's a bit too hyperbolic, we could always call is "SCRAPPLE"

Ha! Scrapple!

I'd be very interested in playing and chowing! And the location sounds doable -- quite a few of the events take place outside of easy public trans and I'm a transit girl all the way.

Keep me informed!

What does everyone think of an early Sunday afternoon?

In general that's a good time for me.

Here is the cooking edition of Scrabble:

http://www.wineenthusiast.com/scrabble-crossword-game-cooking-edition.asp

They have a chocolate edition now too.

When are we getting together again? I wouldn't mind playing for chocolate.

Pie Lady wrote:They have a chocolate edition now too.

When are we getting together again? I wouldn't mind playing for chocolate.

Just remember that Pie Lady anagrams to Play, die!

/also "idle pay," "deal - yip!," "I'd lay pe," and for you math fans, "delay pi."

Santander wrote:

Pie Lady wrote:They have a chocolate edition now too.

When are we getting together again? I wouldn't mind playing for chocolate.

Just remember that Pie Lady anagrams to Play, die!

/also "idle pay," "deal - yip!," "I'd lay pe," and for you math fans, "delay pi."

That's right, I'm hard-core

Once my sister challenged me when I played queso. My defense was that if it's on the menu at american chain restaurants like Chili's, and people who don't know a lick of Spanish know the word, then it should be allowed whether it's in the dictionary or not. She challenged it, she won the challenge, and I never played scrabble with her again.