Mattel’s ‘Scrabble Together’: A Cooperative Spin-Off for Novice Players and Families

In recent news, Mattel has stirred up controversy among the gaming community with its latest edition of Scrabble. Designed primarily for younger gamers, called “Scrabble Together,” this new version aims to make the game more accessible by reducing or eliminating competitive aspects, particularly because some reports claim Gen Z have a perceived reluctance toward conflicts when playing games. Instead, players are encouraged to collaborate and work together through goal cards that challenge them with word-related tasks such as finding words containing two different vowels at random on the board.
According to Ray Adler from Mattel Games’ vice president and global head of games division, this new variant was created specifically for individuals who may have been intimidated by Scrabble in its original form due to unfamiliar vocabulary or cognitive demands required during gameplay. The company hopes that “Scrabble Together” will appeal not only to parents playing with their children but also couples seeking a less competitive experience and friends looking to unwind while still enjoying the game’s benefits.
While this new version has garnered significant attention, it is far from being an entirely novel concept in Scrabble variants. In 1958, “Scrabble Junior” was released as the first spin-off aimed at children between ages five and twelve years old who found the original game too challenging due to its predefined word lists. Following that were a slew of other versions like Upwords (introduced in 1982), Super Scrabble, which expanded the board’s size from fifteen by fifteen squares to twenty-one by twenty-one, and more recently, “Scrabble Slam” and “Scrabble Flash.”
Despite these previous iterations of the game that simplified rules or vocabulary lists, none caused any significant uproar among traditional Scrabblers. This latest release is not entirely dissimilar to its predecessors in this regard since it comes with a two-sided board allowing players to switch between classic and cooperative modes depending on their preferences.
The current outcry over “Scrabble Together” seems largely confined within the right-wing media, which has labeled it an attack against Western civilization despite having little prior knowledge or interest in Scrabble’s developmental pathways as a game itself. As noted by comedian and Fox News host Greg Gutfeld during his show The Five, he had never played Scrabble before but still felt compelled to share his opinion on the matter due to its current trending status within right-wing media circles.
The competitive nature of tournament-level Scrabble is well documented, as revealed by “G.I.” Joel Sherman in Stefan Fatsis’ book Word Freak about professional players such as himself. Despite this highly cutthroat gameplay dynamic, collaborative social and mutualistic behaviors are innate to human DNA, according to Gutfeld.
Regardless of these points made against the new Scrabble edition by critics like Greg Gutfeld, Mattel’s Adler has clarified that “Scrabble Together” is not meant as a replacement for classic versions but instead aims at being an addition catering primarily to novices and families looking forward to less intense competition in gameplay. The bottom line seems pretty straightforward here; while Scrabble traditionalists may continue playing the original version, there’s no harm done by introducing new players into this world of word games through “Scrabble Together.”