Mattel, the makers of Scrabble, have announced that the world's most popular board word game with plastic tiles, is to have a Welsh Language version.
"We've produced a French and German version already," said Matthew Tell, product designer at the games giant. "The German version is the most different one we've produced so far, as the board has to be twice as wide to accommodate their words."
The Welsh language version does have a standard size board, but cannot use the standard tile distribution.
"Normally," said Tell, "you get a shedload of Es and Ss. In the Welsh version, you get that number of Ls and Fs instead. In fact, the number of vowels needed is far far lower. And most of those are the letter U."
Additionally, the values of the letters have been altered, with the letter W now worth one point, instead of the usual four. The letter E is now worth five points.
"Other than that," said Tell, "the way the game is played has not altered. Although the tactics will be different, as there are only six two letter words in Welsh. This means more in the way of crossword style placements, rather than that annoying thing good Scrabble players do, which is put a word under another one."
Although the game itself is well under way, there is one issue outstanding.
"We're yet to find a good Welsh dictionary we can use as the Official Welsh Scrabble Words List," said Tell. "We've found a few Welsh to English dictionaries, but we don't know of a plain Welsh dictionary."
As soon as the list of words allowed can be finalised, expect the new version to be on sale in Swansea for Christmas.
