The recent news about a Californian school district banning the dictionary reminded me of several conversations we’ve had with people over the last several months.  They basically all boil down to this: where do you stand on ‘nipple’?

The reason I ask is that, as I’m sure you’ve seen, our new game, Quarrel, involves making words.  There’s no blood, guts, murder, killing or nipples.  At all.  We do however have ‘blood’, ‘guts’, ‘murder’, ‘killing’ and ‘nipples’.  Plus ‘bottoms’, ‘lingerie’ and ’swizzled’.

Which is a problem for some people.  It’s simple enough to block the very naughty words.  You know, the ones which are neither big nor clever – and which would get you fired if you said them on telly.  However, one man’s naughty word is another man’s adjective.

There are many words that are perfectly respectable and widely used medical or anatomical words to describe body parts or activities, that some people do find uncomfortable or objectionable.  But is the actual word itself, devoid of context, ‘rude’?

We’ve had to consider this all the way through the development of Quarrel.  We want everyone to be able to play and enjoy the game, but drawing the line is very tricky indeed.  Some people find the word ‘gay’ offensive and inappropriate.  For others, body parts are quite beyond the pale.

In our public demonstration in Edinburgh last year, an anagram of the word ’swankier’ upset one player, when she guessed (incorrectly) that it was another, altogether ruder word.  The mistake was hers, but she was still genuinely upset.

Which opens up a whole can of worms.  If we remove every word which contains letters which can be used to spell a rude word, then we’ll end up with around six clean, appropriate and wholesome words in the entire game.

We’ve decided not to remove any words at all, since we’re using a real dictionary licensed from the good people at Collins. What we have done, however, is include a ‘Family Friendly’ option that ensures certain words aren’t accepted during play. Some words were fairly obvious candidates for filtering, but others were borderline. Our decision process for these was this: would we feel uncomfortable seeing this word if playing the game with our kids or our grandparents? If the answer to that was yes, we made sure it was filtered. We think that provides a good balance, and while it perhaps won’t appease everyone, it appeases us.

Banning the dictionary though, is – I’m sure you’ll agree – flat out demented.

- Brian (@flackboy)