Most Scrabble players presented with a rack containing a tile marked “LL” would be both puzzled and stuck. But for players of the newly released Welsh edition of the popular word game, it’s an easy score.
Released on Wednesday, the new edition of Scrabble, a 50-year-old board game in which players construct words on a grid from a random selection of letters, is aimed at the estimated 500Â 000 speakers of Welsh.
Using computers to analyse the Welsh dictionary and works such as a Welsh-language Bible, the Welsh Books Council helped design a version of Scrabble fit for the language.
Scrabble players familiar with the English version might be surprised at the results.
High-scoring Q and Z are gone, as they do not exist in Welsh, a Celtic language that has gained in popularity in recent decades thanks to official encouragement and burgeoning Welsh nationalism.
Meanwhile, the likes of the double L, double D and double F, as well as NG and RH, all used as single letters in the language, are given their own tiles.
“It’s been such a popular game in English, we have been thinking for quite some time it would be nice to have it in Welsh,” said Dewi Morris Jones, head of the Welsh Book Council.
The council hopes Scrabble yn Gymraeg (Scrabble in Welsh), will be popular with Welsh speakers around the world and help promote reading in the region’s native language.
A commonly cited example of the peculiarities of Welsh is a North Wales village that claims to have the longest place name in the world: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyllllantysiliogogogoch.
This translates as “Saint Mary’s church in the hollow of the white hazel near a rapid whirlpool and the church of Saint Tysilio of the red cave”.
Leisure Trends, which licensed the game from Mattel, has initially produced about 2Â 500 copies.
More than 100-million copies of Scrabble have been sold in 121 countries around the world, and the game is available in 30 languages. — AFP