Hard Scrabble

General election, general schmelection; the important news today is that the makers of scrabble have changed the rules (for the first time in its sixty odd year history) to allow players to use, the previously verboten, proper nouns.

Assuming the mantle of Sir Bufton Tufton, Tory back bencher from the shires and old-school clubman, we can only comment that this is:

an act of desperation by the makers, who have presumably noticed that not only can younger people not spell, read or write, they will cry off to their Playstations if asked to cope with the simple and necessary rule prohibiting proper nouns because, of course, they don’t understand the difference between proper and common nouns and have a functional vocabulary of approximately thirteen nouns, which is pretty limiting in a Scrabble context). The logical next relaxation of this rule would be to allow players to play all seven letters at whim, just so long as the resulting word looks pretty or sounds phonetically interesting in the eyes of the individual.

As a nod to the vulgar world of politics however I offer you prorogation (64 points).

Prorogation marks the end of a parliamentary session. It is the formal name given to the period between the end of a session of Parliament and the State Opening of Parliament that begins the next session. The parliamentary session may also be prorogued when Parliament is dissolved and a general election called.

Nick Browne is a constitutional expert.