Question During free time at my place of work, the faculty often get together for some intense rounds of "Boggle". In case you're not familiar, this is a game where letters are randomly arranged in a square, and then the players are timed as they try to form words using only adjacent letters. Because the scores are often so close, much debate often arises as to what constitutes a fair word. For example, can "er" be added to any verb to make it a noun, such as to "dare" or "err" to make "darer" and "errer", one who dares, and one who errs, respectively? Also, would a word like "beated", which is not in the dictionary, be acceptable if someone had heard it used, say in the following case: "after the eggs are beated...". What about sounds like "purr", or "whizz"? What are the criteria for determining if something is a word? Whose say should be taken as authoritative? Thanks!

Accepted:

October 18, 2007