Wordtwist Dictionary Update

[Nylimb]

They never were in Wordtwist. Any board generated that included the possibility of forming hard vulgarity was always immediately discarded.

That isn't true of the newest boards. I saw this board recently; it has one of those words in the upper left corner, but it wasn't accepted:

HINGY
STOLS
CNRES
UEDER
DALIP

[bwt1213]

That isn't true of the newest boards. I saw this board recently; it has one of those words in the upper left corner, but it wasn't accepted:

HINGY
STOLS
CNRES
UEDER
DALIP

In case anyone doesn't see it (it took me a while) the word starts with a "C" and ends with an "S" and is five letters. I have to say this whole exercise is tedious. The "forbidden words" are actually Anglo-Saxon names in their language for body parts or functions. The only reason they're forbidden is that they are not French or Latin terms. The conqueror will forbid use of the conquered people's speech and declare it obscene. If it were up to me, I'd accept it without question. And I would accept all the other "vulgarities", too. The root of "vulgarity" comes from Latin and means, roughly, "common speech". Guys, we ought to be past this.

[Nylimb]

In case anyone doesn't see it (it took me a while) the word starts with a "C" and ends with an "S" and is five letters.

Actually I didn't see that one. I was thinking of the four-letter word starting with "S" and ending with "T".

[admin]

Good catch Nylimb! Our code should definitely have killed that board (I see now why the code didn't work as intended). I guess as long as the words in question aren't playable - they aren't - then it's not a major issue, though I'll give it a think and figure out whether or not it's worth reprocessing all the new boards to remove cases like these.

UPDATE: Found a small percentage of boards like these in both 4x4 and 5x5, and they've now all been removed. Thanks again Nylimb for catching this.

[crazykate]

How do you handle cultural differences when it comes to vulgarities? Apparently, some words that are considered obscene in Britain are acceptable in the US and vice versa. And I probably wouldn't be able to tell an Australian vulgarity from the name of a cute marsupial. And there are some words that are innocent words in English but mean something vulgar in a different language... I mean, I get why some swear words might not be allowed, but if they're not playable, why ban the boards where the letter combinations are just there? If you're wanting to protect kids - if they recognise a swearword in a jumble of letters, their minds have already been corrupted by others. If they see a jumble of letters that potentially contain a swearword that they don't know, it will mean nothing to them.

[admin]

Mostly because (a) it's a tiny percentage of the board database and (b) it's an easier way to confirm that a widely-known curse word isn't prominently spelled out (i.e. completely horizontally, vertically, diagonally, etc.) in a game board. I'm only doing this for a short list of widely accepted "vulgar" keywords, and I realize it doesn't cover every possible vulgarity or variation in certain cultures, etc. - but it covers pretty much all of the "biggies" in American English (which is about 80% of our audience). As for whether or not any of this is actually necessary... like anything, it depends on your point of view. We have enough young people using these sites though that it feels like a worthwhile step to take, and since there's absolutely minimal loss on the data side (something like a tenth of a percent of all game boards), there's very little downside in doing so. It's also a lot easier to just take these boards out of the game entirely than it is to constantly have to explain the no-vulgarity-allowed-rule whenever someone tries to play %&@! and it doesn't work, even though it is legitimately spelled out on the board.

[2cute]

In case anyone doesn't see it (it took me a while) the word starts with a "C" and ends with an "S" and is five letters. I have to say this whole exercise is tedious. The "forbidden words" are actually Anglo-Saxon names in their language for body parts or functions. The only reason they're forbidden is that they are not French or Latin terms. The conqueror will forbid use of the conquered people's speech and declare it obscene. If it were up to me, I'd accept it without question. And I would accept all the other "vulgarities", too. The root of "vulgarity" comes from Latin and means, roughly, "common speech". Guys, we ought to be past this.

Thanks for explaining what you all were discussing as I didn't see any offending words.

Also I didn't realize you could follow the letters that way to create a word. I hope this will help me in the future find more words!

[Nylimb]

UPDATE: Found a small percentage of boards like these in both 4x4 and 5x5, and they've now all been removed.

I noticed another one:

SZQBE
CDENH
AGASS
IWORI
ERERA

This contains a 4-letter word (D**O) which wasn't accepted, although it is in CSW19 https://www.anagrammer.com/dictionary/csw19 and several other word lists. It's defined in CSW19 as an offensive term for "a man of Italian, Spanish or Portuguese origin".

(I could get a bad reputation if I keep finding words like this...)

[bwt1213]

When I read Stephen's response I realized that there might actually be children playing this game. And those children would have parents who might want to know someone was insulating their children from the crudities of life. And as much as I want to affirm that all those "naughty" words are only considered so because the conquerors of England relegated the vulgar speech to obscenities, I do realize that there are words parents do not want their children to see, hear, or repeat. So the needs of the person running this site might differ from mine by just a small bit. I will have to note, however, that those same children have probably heard those same words, and worse, at least dozens of times by the time they are perhaps eight years old. It's just that their parents don't want to know that. Okay. Good on you, Stephen.

[Nylimb]

A couple of hours ago I tried to post about another board that I found, that had an ethnic slur in it. The word wasn't accepted, although it's in the Collins Scrabble Words list. For some reason, my post is marked as "Unapproved" and I can only see it when I'm logged in. I've never had that happen before. Does anyone know what might have caused it?

I thought maybe the fact that I included a link to another website might be the problem; that happens on YouTube, although I've never seen it happen here. So I tried to edit the post to delete the link, and was told that I'm not authorized to edit it.

I'm curious to see if this post will have a similar problem.

[Nylimb]

That went through without any problem, so I'll try again to show the board that had the slur:

SZQBE
CDENH
AGASS
IWORI
ERERA

The word in question is D**O.

[admin]

Thanks Nylimb - these boards are now removed. Weren't too many, only found on 29 5x5 boards and 25 4x4.

(And yes, the forum software tends to automatically flag posts with URLs in them as potential spam.)

[crazykate]

That went through without any problem, so I'll try again to show the board that had the slur:

SZQBE
CDENH
AGASS
IWORI
ERERA

The word in question is D**O.

I don't think I know that word, can't think of any possible combination in that jumble of letters that starts with D, ends on O, and makes any kind of sense, whether acceptable or otherwise

[Naboka]

Dear admin,

sometimes words in Lexic (which don't seem to fit the exclusion criteria) don't work.

Could be lousy typing.

Recent words that didn't work: ennew, ennewed, carene.

[admin]

All three of those are categorized as archaic/obsolete, and so were not included.