'Zzz' Spells Discontent for Scrabble Enthusiasts

If you sigh in resignation every time you pull a Z or Q out of the Scrabble letter bag, new additions to the game’s official word list probably have you sighing in relief. But aficionados say the expanding list—now including “za,” “qi,” and “zzz”—makes it too easy to score massive points, and contradicts “the game’s internal logic,” one tells the Wall Street Journal.

Some are pushing to change the points values assigned each letter in 1948 by creator Alfred Butts, who painstakingly marked up newspapers and counted letters in common words. Changing the rules might result in “a game more challenging and logical from the Scrabble expert’s point of view, but not for those of us who are mere mortals,” notes a Scrabble translator. (More Scrabble stories.)