Some people play Scrabble to have fun, catch up with family or friends, chill.

But there is an altogether different breed of Scrabble player. And many of those show up for the weekly gathering of the Washington Scrabble Club, held in an Upper Northwest Washington restaurant.

They come to have fun, yes. But what’s more fun than winning? And scoring big? And playing acceptable words that don’t seem like they could possibly be acceptable words to mere word mortals?

Is “moraine” or “diester” in your vocabulary? How about “ensilage” or “tacnode” or “procaine?”

Those who answer yes might do well in the club where, earlier this month, about 14 participants squared off in one-on-one games over a three-hour stretch and played all of those words and many more: Ouzels, upo, ne, ajee, squeg? Don’t bother challenging. They’re all allowed.

On this night, the players for the first time officially used new words approved in November by the dictionary committee of the club’s governing body, the North American Scrabble Players Association. The list of 4,787 new words — 4,787! — includes the approximately 500 words added to the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary in 2022.

The rest of the new words are drawn from other dictionaries or sources and include words labeled offensive by some dictionaries and words that the official Scrabble dictionary does not permit. Of the new words, 719 are three to eight letters, which are more useful to most Scrabble players than much longer words.

There are some questionable inclusions. Not everyone is thrilled that the list includes words that can’t be found in standard dictionaries. Word such as “feceses” (as a plural of “feces”), “debrises” (plural of “debris”) and “favest” (meaning “most favorite”) are among those being bashed.

But the inclusion of modern slang terms is welcomed by most players, said Tom Nagle, who showed up at a recent club night.

PWNED, NOOBS, ADORBS, EFFED, FINNA? He’s fine with all of them

“Language keeps changing, and it drives you crazy, but that’s the way language works,” said Nagle, 70, who retired seven weeks ago and tries to play Scrabble every day. “I don’t want to be that old guy sitting around yelling, ‘Why the hell can’t people speak correctly!’”

Everyone is welcome at the club, but Scrabble here is not the kitchen table variety. It is sport. There is pressure. Play is ruled by a clock, with each player getting a total of 25 minutes a game, so there’s not a lot of idle chitchat.

“A lot of people, especially new players, that bothers them,” said Ted Gest, the co-director of the club, which formed in the 1980s. “They would like to be able to sit around literally for hours playing one game. Well, we don’t do it that way.”

Jackie Wilson said she prefers the challenge of playing in Scrabble clubs rather than home games. And she really likes the clock. “I play with my son and daughter, but they play without a clock, and they take too long,” said Wilson, 69, who found like-minded wordsmiths at the club after recently moving to Maryland from New Jersey.

Originally called Criss-Crosswords, the game was created in 1938 by American architect Alfred Mosher Butts. (For those keeping score, “mosher” and “butts” are acceptable Scrabble words. “Alfred” is not.) After Butts sold the game in the 1940s, it was re-christened Scrabble and has gone on to become one of the top-selling board games of all time.

On a recent Tuesday evening, the familiar rites and sounds of Scrabble fill the room. The rattle of tiles as they’re shaken in the bag. The subtle slap of letters being placed on the board. The adding up of points scored after each play.

“Four and one is five, plus two is seven, plus five is 12, tripled is 36,” one contestant announces. Both players agree on the scoring and then write it down on their scorecards. Analytics has a role. Most of the club’s players track every letter that has been played and what letters remain available to help determine strategy.

“At the highest level, Scrabble is a math game,” Stefan Fatsis, 60, one of the club’s members and the author of “Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players,” said as he drew tiles from the bag. “It’s more of a strategy game than a game of ‘Oh, look at that cute word I made.’”

Ranked 127th in North America, Fatsis averages close to 400 points a game in competitions. An author and journalist who also coaches the Scrabble club at a D.C. middle school, he has a brain for this. In seconds, he transforms LHIETNO into HOTLINE, then NEOLITH. But at this juncture of the game, the board is not his friend. There’s no room to play either high-scoring “bingo” — the term for using all seven letters — so he joins a Y on the board to play THINLY and draws again.

Fatsis also welcomes the new words but notes that none packs the punch of “qi” and “za,” which revolutionized Scrabble when they were approved in the mid-2000s. “‘Qi’ was a game changer. That totally changed the mathematics,” he said.

While knowing the spelling of allowable words is a necessity, knowing their definitions doesn’t matter to some players. Jay Westreich, a 27-year-old data analyst for Metro, doesn’t even bother learning the definitions. If anything, he says, he tries to avoid learning the meanings. “It’s just too much to keep track of,” Westreich said.

Words that are not allowed are called phonies, and players will sometimes put down phonies just to see whether their opponent will let them get away with it. It’s Scrabble’s version of bluffing. But at the highest level, it’s not easy to fool other players.

John Wilder, who is ranked 216th in North America, spends about four hours a week studying words — more when big tournaments are approaching. During games, he tracks his choices so he can later analyze them with a computer program that tells him whether he had better options available that would have scored more points.

“Scrabble unites the word nerds and the math nerds,” said Wilder, 29, who manages federal grants for the Department of Homeland Security. “The game appeals as much, or even more, to computer scientists and mathematicians than literature professors or linguists.”

Gary Emanuel, 79, remembers playing on the beach with friends and cousins as a kid. He doesn’t take the game quite as seriously as some others — “I’m middling” he says, laughing — but gets a big thrill if he can use all seven of his letters. “Finding a bingo is the addictive thing,” he said. “That’s what keeps you coming back.”

Scoring big also keeps people coming back.

Carole Denton remembers her top Scrabble score as if it happened yesterday and not at a NASPA National Scrabble tournament in New Orleans in 2017.

605.

“It was a dream game. I got everything,” recalled Denton, 73, one of the co-directors of the club and a three-time Jeopardy champion. “I just drew every possible wonderful combination every time. Quite frankly, my opponent was not quite up to speed, and I took big advantage of it.”

For Denton, the onslaught of new words just means more ways to score points.

“I’ve been waiting for ‘vax’ for years. And I like ‘jedi,’” she said.