Here’s Scrabble’s dirty little secret: the game is really about maximizing points and space to yield the highest return. Someone who has memorized all the acceptable two-letter words in the formalized dictionary will do much better than someone who knows how to use ‘paletot’ in a sentence. You can forget about neologisms like “eponysterical” or archaic remnants found only in the OED. Scrabble rewards efficiency, memorization and fortune, while remaining ambivalent to creativity, imagination and verve. Maximize property value, minimize artistic expression.
It’s about capitalism, basically.
— Michael Stewart, “Scrabble’s dirty secret”, rabble.ca
