A cultural centre in Stornoway has worked with a London-based toy company to create a Gaelic edition of Scrabble.
An Taigh Cèilidh, a cultural centre and community cafe in the Outer Hebrides, has spent the past few years developing the game.
The latest edition offers a new challenge to players as the Gaelic alphabet only features 18 letters and the grave accent is featured on some of the vowel tiles.
As well as the board and rules being in the language, the number of letters reflect the frequency of use in Gaelic, and the letter scores match how difficult it is to use the letters to spell a Gaelic word.
Teàrlach Wilson, the founding director of An Taigh Cèilidh, first reached out to Tinderbox Games in 2021 to find out if a Scottish Gaelic edition of the famous board game already existed.
He then offered his expertise as a PhD in Gaelic and a fluent Welsh speaker to help turn it into a reality.
After completing many test games, the team at An Taigh Cèilidh worked with the toy company to license the Gaelic edition – becoming the 29th Scrabble language.
Invitation to Gaelic Scrabble World Championships
To officially launch the board game, An Taigh Cèilidh will host the first-ever Gaelic Scrabble World Championships in Stornoway on December 2.
“I can’t wait to play,” Teàrlach said. “But if I win, people will think it’s rigged and, if I lose, people will question whether I should have my PhD in Gaelic.”
Jim Harrison, chief executive of Tinderbox Games, added: “It’s great to see this latest version of Scrabble joining our successful Welsh and Irish editions, thanks to a lot of hard work over the last couple of years from the team at An Taigh Cèilidh.
“I hope everyone enjoys playing it as much as we enjoyed making it.”
Gaelic Scrabble are available to pre-order via the An Taigh Cèilidh website at a special price of £36 until December 1. The price will increase to £39.99 after the official launch.
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