I can imagine that maybe this rumored rule change wa akin to shortening the sacred distance between home plate and first base or allowing a Chess queen to hop her knights.

But maybe it would have been good? Maybe proper nouns would just expand the dictionary, letting people who don't know currently approved words like "udo" and "kue" to use the name of the city they live in or their favorite celebrity to play an official game. Maybe it would allow more people to enjoy Scrabble without hatching their own rules — not that it is so hard to do so given that the Scrabble authorities don't usually prosecute?

Were the Scrabble defenders simply protecting great rules or were they being, as some of those Farmville-loathers and Wii-haters can be, elitist? "As someone who has spent many hours memorizing key words," Williams told me, he wouldn't want "someone walking off the street, playing the name of some rapper I don't know, and offsetting a brilliant move I just made."

I was rightly chastised yesterday by a reader who had recognized that I was not an experienced enough Scrabble player to know there is only one K in the game. I can believe that the rules of Scrabble don't bend without breaking. But I wonder: Is there something about gamers, not just video games, that doesn't want more people to play, that doesn't want our games to change — and can we say confidently that that reflex is always right?

If there was a real chance to allow proper nouns in Scrabble, are we sure it shouldn't be seized?