Scabblability of a word based on Googlabilty: how many hits would you demand?

Cafe Society
1

The most important thing about Scrabble rules is, I suppose, that the individual players of a particular game agree on which rules are to be observed and how strictly the rules are to be enforced.

That’s my opinion anyway, Scrabble Purists may find this entire OP completely offensive.

THE ANECDOTE:
I have one particular friend with whom I play Scrabble quite regularly.
Yesterday, I had an opportunity to spell UNCLEAN, using 6 of my letters (building off a present “L”). My one remaining letter was an “S”.
Now, I’m an O.K. Scrabble player but never in my life have I ever actually gotten a “Scrabble”, use of all seven of my letters on one turn. Here I was, so close to a full-on Scrabble! And the one letter I have left, an “S”, about the most usable letter in the English language!!!

So, before taking my turn, I asked my friend: “Can the word ‘unclean’ only be an adjective, or can it be an adjective or a verb like the word ‘clean’? ‘He, she, or it uncleans’ Or could ‘unclean’ ever be used as a noun to refer to a thing that is unclean, the plural of which could be uncleans???”
Now, I realized I was skating on thin ice, as I myself have never heard or read the word “uncleans”. My friend agreed that it wasn’t so far a stretch of the imagination that someone might use “unclean” as a noun or a verb, so she allowed me to use it.

Again, the Scrabble Purists may balk but for this particular Scrabble Match-Up the two players were in agreement and there was no dispute.
THE POINT OF THE THREAD:
Today, out of curiosity, I thought I’d Google the word “uncleans” and I got over 2,000 hits. Surprisingly, a great number of the hits came from discussions amongst Coin Collectors- apparently ancient coins, archaeologically unearthed, that have not been cleaned and polished are referred to as “uncleans”.

Thus this thread was inspired.

A Google search will include spelling errors.
A Google search will include slang.
A Google search will include neologisms.
A Google search will include portmanteaux.
A Google search will include misdeclined, or misconjugated words, and various other mistakes.
Given the tainted results of a Google Search: if you were to base the Scrabblability or a word upon the Googlability of the word, how many Google Hits would you demand before deeming the word acceptable?

2

A search for “teh” turned up 46,400,000, so more than that.

ETA: Even “scabbability” turned up one hit.

3

FWIW, UNCLEANS is not a valid TWL98 or SOWPODS word.

Also, using all seven letters is properly referred to as a “bingo.”

Carry on.

/scrabble nerd

4

Oooh! Probably the best example you could have given of the flaws of Googlability!

5

Yeah, but it’s a simple typo. You’d probably have to take into account the number of letters. Personally, I wouldn’t go by Google at all. That’s what Dictionary.com is for.

6

Agree, I’d go by the dictionary. Things may get hits on google, but they can still be wrong.

7

Personally, I wouldn’t go by Dictionary.com at all, either. That’s what The Official Scrabble Player’s Dictionary is for (TWL98 or SOWPODS depending on which rules you’re using).

Dictionary.com or that paperback dictionary on your desk are missing a LOT of playable Scrabble words and contain some other words that are not allowable.

I know that some people don’t think the game is very fun when people (like me) want to play by the rules, but I don’t understand how you could have a fun, competitive game without using a Scrabble word list. In my experience when people don’t use a proper word list then trouble always starts when someone plays a word like QAT or AA. In cases like that people sometimes insist that the word be defined or that the player who placed the word explain in detail why that word should be allowed.

Both of which have absolutely nothing to do with Scrabble, and can be a real buzzkill. It’s good to learn the rules before you play.

Using internet search engines doesn’t cut it either–it just leads to confusion and arguments. Many people don’t realize that Scrabble has nothing to do with vocabulary per se or language knowledge.

In fact, even though official tournament Scrabble is played in English some of the very best championship-level competitive Scrabble players can’t really speak, read or understand English at all (other than being able to read the symbols on the tiles).

Luckily they don’t have to. Like any top Scrabble player, they need only to memorize tens of thousands “character strings” (my term), learn top strategy, and then of course be able to recall any of those “character strings” on a moments notice.

To them the words might as well be strings of digits, nonsensical Runes, mathematical formulae or codes. So while most of the competitive players speak English (and most of them speak it as a first language) and are really smart folks who may happen to have large vocabularies, they don’t actually *need *any language skills to be a great player.

Being able to define, pronounce or know the etymology of a word has nothing to do with the game of Scrabble.

Please don’t ask me what QAT or AA are— I don’t know.