A flawed victory

I won this afternoon's game of Scrabble and, for once in a while, our combined score broke the 600 point barrier. The fourth time since we started playing regularly at the start of the plague, the first time since last July, as reported at reference 1.

Sadly, there were at least two flaws.

First we have 'salon' on the right hand, which BH did not challenge but which I now find to be marked as foreign in OED, and would have been disallowed if there had been a challenge. 

Second we have 'zo' hanging off salon, scoring 10 on a triple letter in two directions, adding up to a handy 64. We have been allowing the word for a long time on the understanding that it was an old Dorset variant of 'so'. But checking this one now, in OED, I find that it is marked as dialect, which is not allowed. Only the King's English, as spoken in Oxford. Can't understand how we let it through in the first place.

However, given that there were no challenges, the score stands. But it is flawed; not entirely satisfying.

In slower time, we consulted the Rules Committee and they have ruled that given first the long standing custom of allowing 'zo' and second the word's usefulness in unloading a 'Z' towards the end of the game, that an exception should be made.

PS 1: King Charles actually went to Trinity at Cambridge, but we let that pass. Noting in passing that he was the first serious royal to bother with getting a degree.

PS 2: reference 2 has just landed in my inbox: yet another sort of faking to worry about. For myself, if I was reporting something for which I had no snap, I think I would prefer to stick to words, maybe illustrated by a real snap which gave something of the idea. But not adding a real fake into the mix. Maybe I will think differently when I have read it.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/07/break-through.html.

Reference 2: Generative AI can turn your most precious memories into photos that never existed: The Synthetic Memories project is helping families around the world reclaim a past that was never caught on camera - Will Douglas Heaven, MIT Technology Review - 2024.

Reference 3: https://www.domesticstreamers.com/. The outfit in Barcelona which is the subject of reference 2.