Winning Entry In Wacky Language

The WildWords Game Company has declared a winner in its contest to find a slogan that would appeal to serious Scrabble(R) players. According to the contest rules, the slogan was to be written in Scrablese which was defined as “the short, odd words in the Official Scrabble Dictionary that never appear in print media and are never spoken.”

WildWords, unlike Scrabble(R), is played with a regular English reference dictionary, since any word, no matter how long, can be played in the game. Scrabblese is not essential to playing the game brilliantly. Peter Roizen, the creator of WildWords, said he and other WildWords players simply did not speak Scrabblese well enough to author even a crummy promotional phrase in the language.

Roizen says, “I was hoping for something soft and subtle with a poetic sense along the lines of ’E Pluribus Unum’.”

The winning entry was “Come one, come all, faqirs and qaids, vavasors and chalutzim, soucars and judokas, kabakas and kamaainas. An oe of flux is shaking the Scrabble aalii, so put that quaich of kvass in its zarf, scrape together your sous, zaires, xu or prutah, put on your zoris or chukkas, and climb in your troika, caique, bidarka or quadriga and make like a jehu (not an ai) to your closest souk to buy WILDWORDS!”

The winning entry was submitted by Megan Romer who writes the board game section at the BellaOnline website. Roizen is not quite sure what to make of it, but he did check a translation to make sure the phrase was not obscene or promoting violence.

“I guess Scrabblese is long on nouns and short on colorful verbs, adjectives, and other language elements. I think I understand now why it looks like a foreign language,” Roizen laments. “It is a language of foreign words.”

“We will have to see what impact this message has on sales,” says Roizen. “The closest souk will be in the Middle East, and buyers would need not just a caique, but a very large one to carry along a quadriga for the land portion of the journey. I’m not sure if people can get there, buy a game, and get back in time for Christmas,” he adds.

The company does report that its recent press release campaign has been going well.

“We have gotten some orders from individuals high up the Scrabble(R)/Hasbro(R) food chain. That’s unusual,” adds Roizen. “Maybe this oe of ours has already started to shake an aalii or two.”

Details of the game can be found at http://www.wildwords.us

Contact Information

Peter Roizen

Inventor

WildWords Game Company

Contact via E-mail