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A lot of the alternatives people propose to Scrabble has the same drawback as Scrabble (needing to learn a specific set of words—Paperback and Word on the Street has that issue also) and some of them (like Boggle and Bananagrams) don’t have the fun of Scrabble’s spatial and timing tactics. I think Scrabble does have the “the other half of the game outside of just knowing words is also fun” quality of games like Wordcraft or Paperback. Quirkle, Hippos and crocodiles, Go might be options for a similarly spatial game but without words.
Even Codenames can be problematic in Swedish and German since we glue noun phrases together. So summerholiday is a word for example and someone might say summerholidaybreakfast and be easily understood. The rule for Codenames and Scrabble in those countries is that only “established” compound nouns are allowed—i.e. ones in an arbitrary list to memorize.
I think creating words is fun but I don’t like how Scrabble is necessarily so list-based. How Dixit solved the “judging issue” from party games like Apples to Apples (and many others), that was a revelation. Getting something like that for word games would be awesome, something that solves the “wordlist issue” and instead makes a word game that reflect your own group’s actual jargon and language.