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More on “shithole”

I spend a lot of time playing *Words with Friends* with my brother-in-law, who lives in France. If you play the game you know that, unlike in Scrabble, if you play a word that isn’t a word, you simply get to try again, without losing a point. Also, the game has a built in dictionary which you can query to determine if a combination of letters is a valid word. You’d be surprised to know that there are a lot of letter combinations that are considered valid words, though the dictionary goes on to say that it “cannot provide a definition at this time”, often because they aren’t really words (at least when my brother in law plays them; it’s an entirely different story when I’m the beneficiary of the game’s largesse).

Anyway, the folks at Zynga, the game’s makers, are going to have to do some quick updating, since it turns out that *shithole* “is not a valid Words with Friends word”. Lest you think they are merely being prudish, rest assured that *fuck*, *shit*, and *shat* are perfectly acceptable, among many others. This oversight on their part is a particularly bitter pill for me, since as I write I have most of the letters required to make *shithole* in my hand. Ah well, life is full of disappointments.

UPDATE: To illustrate my point a bit, my brother in law just scored 83 points playing *zonula*, which the game helpfully explained was a valid word thought it abjectly apologized for not having a definition available at this time. Makes you wonder how they could possibly miss *shithole*.

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