Hey Mattel, leave our Scrabble alone

Last week, Mattel caused distress by apparently announcing that Scrabble would shortly be accepting brandnames and proper nouns as words in a bid to attract younger players. The prospect of some feckless 19-year-old gumpo winning a game by placing the word JEDWARD across a triple-word-score hotspot led to mass nerd anguish. Have you ever heard mass nerd anguish? Imagine the sound of one freelance graphic designer whining because his/her iPad can't find a wireless connection, multiply it by 20,000 and garnish with the occasional wounded sob. It's like a choir with backache, and it's what the internet sounds like if you hold an empty tumbler against its walls and squint really hard with your ears.

Anyhow, it soon transpired there was no cause for alarm. First, the hardcore dweeb contingent was quickly silenced by the launch of an insanely advanced Apple-approved version of Scrabble, in which you use an iPad as the board and up to four iPhones as tile racks. (I'm not making this up: it's just like the real thing, but more expensive and less eco-friendly.)

Second, it turned out Mattel wasn't going to mess with the rules of original lo-fi 3D real-world Scrabble at all; it was merely launching a zany limited-edition called Scrabble Trickster, which as well as permitting entries such as YAKULT, also lets players place words backwards or in floating, unconnected spaces, because hey it's kerrr-azzzy! You can play it on the table! You can play it on the floor! You can even play it at one o'clock in the morning if you're mad!!!! It's Scrabble Anarchy!

Greed

Forget it. We don't need any more Scrabble mutations. What started out as a simple word game already comes in various bastardised flavours, ranging from My First Dora the Explorer Scrabble (for toddlers) to Scrabble Scramble (in which the tiles are replaced with dice). At this rate, Scrabble risks falling victim to the same function creep that has hopelessly diluted the Monopoly brand.

Monopoly isn't really a board game any more, but an outsized cardboard souvenir coaster. There's an officially licensed Monopoly board promoting almost everything you can think of, from Coronation Street to the US Marine Corps, not to mention insanely specific localised editions (the Northampton edition, for example, features Lodge Farm industrial estate in place of The Strand). And those are just the ones you find in shops. Many businesses have their own officially licensed Monopoly vanity boards, hence such pulse-quickening oddities as the BBK Clinical Research and Development Edition. What next? An official Monopoly board celebrating former Channel 4 continuity announcer and current Smooth Radio drivetime DJ Paul Coia? I hope so.

Still, Monopoly hasn't got its claws into every intellectual property going. Say what you like about the Britain's Got Talent franchise, but at least it's taken the trouble to invent an original game of its very own, albeit one whose contents make for sobering reading if you envisage a scenario in which it's the only form of entertainment left following a nuclear apocalypse: "1x board with electronic unit. 6x playing pieces. Game cards with 300 talents. 1x microphone with echo effect. 1x Kazoo. Magic playing cards. Plastic cups. Balls. Origami paper."

But no. Wait. There's something even more suited to post-apocalyptic bunker-fun than that. Behold The Logo Board Game, in which players have to "identify images and answer questions based on logos, products and packaging of the UK's most well-known brands". The box art features the corporate identities of Shell, Burger King, Walkers, Pampers, Heinz, Alfa Romeo, Wrigley, Birds Eye, Kellogg's, Interflora, Uncle Ben's, The Chicago Town Pizza Company, Sun-Maid Raisins and National Express coaches, flanked by Homepride Fred and Churchill the nodding insurance dog.

Again, I'm not making this up. This is a genuine product. Popular too, going by the number of five-star Amazon reviews. "We play lots of family board games but this has to be the No 1 of all time ... The whole family played this from aged 14-85 and what fun we all had we thought we knew our logos but boy did it make us use our brains!!"

And if everyone in the bunker tires of that but there are another three months until the all-clear sounds, there's always Operation. Not the board game version, but an improvised real one, in which everyone crowds round the body of whoever died last and takes turns carving bits off with a butter knife in exchange for corks or chunks of tin or whatever you're using as currency. It's fun for all the family! Apart from Amy, who's a bit squeamish. And Brian. Who's the dead one.