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."
|