Should Scrabble have axed word ‘jandal’?

Wordsmith Kiwis are outraged over Scrabble's banning of the word "jandal" from the game's official word list.

The latest edition of Scrabble Official Words was released on Friday and contains slang (thang, innit), colloquial drug terms (tik, gak), technospeak (wiki, blog) and words derived from Indian cuisine (keema, aloo).

There were 2810 new inclusions in the 270,000-word list.

But the word jandal was excised.

New Zealand's champion player Howard Warner said the term should never have been removed and the decision was made against the advice of a Kiwi Scrabble expert and dictionary compiler.

The list's English-based editor Robert Groves said jandal was removed due to a Scrabble rule preventing words requiring a capital letter.

He said he had always seen the footwear referred to as Jandal, like Band-Aid.

However, Groves said the flood of complaints may force him to reconsider the term for the book's next edition, due in about 18 months' time.

And he will be searching New Zealand media, blogs and messageboards for evidence of the word's usage.

Warner said the decision was "an absolute abomination". "They shouldn't be taking out words unless they are definite mistakes," he said.

"Someone in Britain stuck their oar in and believed the only possible New Zealand words we could have would be Maori words. They assume if we have any English words, we would borrow Australian ones. "

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11 July 2011