You might think that the name of a company or a product would always be spelt with a capital. Not so: some of them have found their way into the dictionary without an initial capital and thus become valid for Scrabble.
All these words are allowed:
BIRO
EBAYER
EBAYING
FEDEX
FORMICA
KLEENEX
RONEO
XEROX
That last one is admittedly not terribly useful, needing a blank to play it, though with the X and a blank you could stun your opponent with a bonus XEROXED or XEROXING. RONEO, FACEBOOK and FEDEX are also verbs and form all the appropriate verbal forms. Note that the existence of EBAYER and EBAYING does not mean you can have ebay or ebayed – those two are not allowed.
By Barry Grossman
Barry is a leading UK Scrabble player and winner of several tournaments. He is the author of Scrabble for Beginners (Chambers), Need to Know Scrabble, Scrabble – Play to Win and The Little Book of Scrabble Trickster. He has also contributed to numerous other books on the subject of words and word-games, has been a series champion of Channel 4’s Countdown, and has written four comedy series for BBC Radio 4. He lives in Hertford.
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