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The Yu family always loved playing word games like Scrabble, but siblings Olive and Adrian had an advantage over their parents, immigrants from Hong Kong. They simply knew more dictionary-approved English words.
To level the playing field, the 20-somethings had an idea: What if they only used fake words?
An absurdist take on Scrabble or Bananagrams, this new game would challenge players to come up with the most ridiculous non-words with believable definitions. Think “xips” (gender-neutral nipple-cover tape), “Pixad” (the sadness that follows watching a Pixar film) or “quiloz” (an under-10-minute nap).
Members of the Yu family spell out fake words while playing Blabbi. The game looks like Bananagrams, but instead of using letter tiles to spell real words, you make up fake ones and defend your invented definitions.
(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
While quarantining at their family home in the San Gabriel Valley as the pandemic took hold in March 2020, the siblings tested their board game idea.
“We thought, ‘Why isn’t this a real game yet? Someone’s got to do it,’” Olive, 24, said. By December 2022, they started selling the game called Blabbi.
Since the pandemic began, board games have flourished as a retail category. The overall market is set to grow by more than $3 billion from 2021 to 2026, according to market research company Technavio. But for Olive and Adrian, Blabbi feels like more of an on-the-side art project than a business, even if they’ve sold more than 1,300 units so far.
The game starts with players picking eight random letter tiles from a bag, as well as three topic cards and one voting card. On each turn, a player introduces a made-up word and definition that falls under one of their topics. Each fake word is put to a vote, and if it clears the group’s bar, the player earns the point value denoted on the topic card. For bonus points, players can make up words that combine two topic cards.
Blabbi’s focus on fun conversations and laughs over traditional competitive gameplay may surprise or frustrate some die-hard gamers. Some comments on Blabbi’s page on the online forum BoardGameGeek question how exactly one wins the game. Adrian, 29, faced the same question while promoting the game at the BoardGameGeek Convention in Dallas last winter.
Olive Yu, second from right, and Adrian Yu, right, inventors of the board game Blabbi, with their parents Garson and Irene Yu at their home.
(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
Give yourself a play break! Tabletop games abound at these bars, game shops and cafes in Los Angeles and Orange counties.
Though he also enjoys playing strategy-based games like Catan, Adrian wasn’t going for a high-stakes melee with Blabbi. “This game really resonates with creative people, especially those who don’t play games, because there’s a different sort of satisfaction,” he said. “Blabbi isn’t necessarily about winning. It’s almost like performance art.”
Steph Cho, a 28-year-old art director in Los Angeles, said she appreciates the game’s low-stakes setup. “I have to sell ideas and concepts every day at work and Blabbi is just that, but not for work,” she said. “It really takes the pressure off while exercising your creativity.”
Singer-actor Zuri Marley — who, yes, is Bob Marley’s granddaughter — took Blabbi home to Jamaica for the holidays after playing it with her roommates in Los Angeles. “I think we made some words that need to be added to the dictionary,” she said. She even managed to turn a consonant-heavy hand into “xvarjvin,” meaning “fashion’s worst nightmare.”
Players use cards and letter tiles when playing a round of Blabbi.
(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
Irene Yu, left, defines the fake word “additi” spelled out with letter tiles while playing Blabbi.
(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
In addition to Blabbi’s loose structure, some gamers have griped about the price. At $59.99, Blabbi is more expensive than Scrabble and Bananagrams, which start at around $15. On Thingtesting — an online marketplace where direct-to-consumer brands can sell products for reduced pricing in exchange for verified, unpaid reviews — nearly half of the reviews of Blabbi critique the game’s cost.
“Blabbi is not a mass-produced product,” Adrian said, defending the price tag. The siblings made the game without funding and are currently producing it in small batches using nonplastic materials, which means higher costs per unit than many other games. Each box contains 100 letter tiles, 80 topic cards and eight “yes” or “no” voting cards. The game is manufactured in Guangzhou, China.
“We would love to come out with a more accessible version in the future,” said Olive.
Tymie Jadagu, a 23-year-old working in music publishing, made the game the centerpiece of a celebration they hosted. Someone played the word “hego” — meaning “creatives that are multicoastal” (as in “he go coast to coast”) — to score bonus points by combining the 100-point categories of Los Angeles and New York.
“It became an inside joke, and we kept using the word after the game,” Jadagu said. “It really stuck in real life.”
Olive Yu points to the fake word “seqmui” while playing Blabbi.
(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
Whether you want to try candle making, Jaipur block printing, glass blowing, neon bending or woodworking, L.A. has a space for that.
Merriam-Webster, which oversees the Scrabble dictionary, updates its entries several times a year. “The process of adding a word to the dictionary is less dynamic than people think. It’s almost mechanical,” said Peter Sokolowski, editor-at-large at Merriam-Webster.
Could a Blabbi entry find its way into the dictionary? “If a word is used by many people in many places, then it gets added to the dictionary,” Sokolowski said. “The only question is when.” Editors keep an eye on the use of burgeoning words, compiling citations over years.
A dictionary nod isn’t the endgame the Yus have in mind, though.
“The reward is making all your friends laugh,” Adrian said.
