…and the game had gotten kinda tight.  I needed that win after the epic beatdown she laid upon me in the first game.  Next thing I know, she plays “coolie.”  I’d never heard that one.  I was hoping she was asleep at the wheel and trying to play “collie” so I could pop up with the most fun sort of challenge–the one you don’t even have to go to the book to check.
So I asked her what that was, and she said it was “a Chinese person that worked on the railroads.”  Maybe I got something wrong with me, but that sounds like a slur.  I wasn’t going to get righteously indignant with her about that–well, not really, but definitely playfully–but I sure thought slurs were banned from Scrabble a few years ago.  And, to think, they did that before I ever got the chance to play “kraut-mick” and use it in the sentence “well, my kraut-mick friend…”
So we check the dictionary, and “coolie” was there.  And how was it defined?
“Oriental laborer.”
So not only are slurs cool in Scrabble now, they’re defined by what amount to slurs.  Funny stuff, if you ask me.