When Susan Chastain started a weekly Scrabble game at her Firefly Club on Ashley in 2005, Merriam-Webster was just bringing out its new Fourth Edition of the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (famous for its game-changing blockbusters qi and za). Nine years later, the Firefly is long gone, and Chastain lives in Florida (though she occasionally comes back to sing jazz). But the Wednesday evening drop-in game is still going strong at Arbor Brewing Company (see Events), with dog-eared Fourth Editions on the tables.
Rumor is that a new official dictionary might come out later this year, but the local Scrabblers aren’t waiting. To bring their game up to date, they’ve unilaterally sanctioned more than 100 new words. Anyone is welcome to show up and throw down such recent coinages as emo, doh, sext, vape, phish, twerk, selfie, spork, googled, fanboy, and locavore. For anyone who wants to bone up beforehand, the complete list is posted on the Ann Arbor Scrabble Club’s Facebook page.
