September 18, 2009 – 6:43 pm
by Toni Schwartz 
As a grammar and spelling nerd, I enjoy playing word games. One example is PopCap’s Bookworm Adventures 2, which I reviewed about a month ago. Recently I fired up a few rounds and stumbled upon some very interesting, downright questionable word usage.
Check out Exhibit A at the top, with the word PIMP. Admittedly it’s really not too bad, though it may raise an eyebrow or two. But what about Exhibit B below?
Whoa nelly. Looks like this cute, colorful little game has a racy side to it. Let’s not forget that during my initial review of the game, WHORE and SCROTUM were also allowed. What’s going on here?
Like any word game, Bookworm Adventures 2 has an in-game dictionary that houses all words that are accepted in the game. According to BWA 2’s Executive Producer Tysen Hendersen, the in-game dictionary has an astounding 195,000 words, 5,000 more than the first BWA. Their basis is the Oxford English Dictionary but with some filters. This includes proper nouns and vulgar language. However, the in-game dictionary does accept valid words that some may consider a bit risqué.
Hence, this word is also allowed:
Some acceptable words may even be politically charged. Check out the mass points I got from it!
Now, as Hendersen mentioned, proper nouns are not acceptable in BWA2, which is standard for word games. Imagine then my surprise when I found that I can use this particularly volatile, Godwin’s Law-upholding proper noun.
So the name LOUIS isn’t allowed, but HITLER is perfectly fine? Hendersen explained that the filtering system is a combination of scripted and manual filtering, and apparently a few words got through the cracks.
“It’s unfortunate and unintended that ‘hitler’ is valid, as it certainly seems to be both a proper noun and offensive. We actually did filter several permutations of that name,” said Hendersen . “As you can imagine it is used in several different formats, conjugations and parts of speech and has several entries with various meanings, all spelled the same way or very similarly.”
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bookworm adventure was a really nice game to me… it helped a lot in enhancing my vocabulary..i find it very interesting,challenging and educational game…i hope i can have the part2 of it…very nice game…i liked it a lot…