No more “culchie,” “culchies,” “culchier,” and “culchiest”.
Professional Scrabble players in North America are set to be banned from using slurs and other offensive words, including “culchie”, in tournaments.
Leaders of the Scrabble tournament community in North America will vote this week on whether to ban the use of racial and homophobic slurs as well as a long list of other offensive words.
In total, the North American Scrabble Players Association will vote to remove some 226 words deemed offensive from its official lexicon for judging with the association believing it has enough support to pass the vote.
The NASPA manages competitive Scrabble tournaments and clubs in North America.
The offensive words have been separated into seven categories – “slur”, “anatomical”, “political”, “profane”, “prurient”, “scatological”, and “vulgar”.
“Culchie,” “culchies,” “culchier,” and “culchiest” are all included under the national origin slurs category.
The N-word is also part of the list of words due to be voted on with a decision due following weeks of anti-racism protests in the US and around the world.
The removal of any words could affect online versions of the game with Mashable reporting the NASPA licenses a list of its words to developers.
In a statement, John Chew, the chief executive officer (CEO) of NASPA said it will inform members of the decision later this evening.
“When we play a slur, we are declaring that our desire to score points in a word game is of more value to us than the slur’s broader function as a way to oppress a group of people,” Chew said in a letter to members.
“I don’t think that this is the time for us to be contributing divisively to the world’s problems.
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