Quarrel crippled by Xbox Live's word filter

The Xbox Live Arcade adaptation of the award-winning iOS word game Quarrel has been having problems with Microsoft’s conservative word filter, even though the game uses the official Scrabble dictionary as its word database.

Players have been been unable to make such words as ‘balls’, ‘train’, and ‘shaft’ in competitive play.

According to Denki’s Gary Penn, “Quarrel uses the Collins official Scrabble dictionary comprising over 110,000 words up to eight letters in length, including a huge collection of words deemed ‘offensive’ by Collins, such as ‘arse’, ‘shit’, ‘wank’ and ‘fuck’.

“You can make any offensive word you can find in singleplayer mode - unless you have the Xbox ‘Family Setting’ turned on.”

As for multiplayer, the Xbox Live language filter kicks in. ”Microsoft has an additional filter in place for all Xbox Live games, which we have to support. But while we have to use that filter, we don’t know which words are permitted,” Penn admitted, adding, “From playing, we do know that it includes such oddities as ‘help’, ‘start’, ‘skid’, ‘poop’, ‘bung’, ‘hung’, ‘dice’ and ‘god’. Microsoft clearly has its reasons for censoring such words within Live games.”

Terms like “start” and “help” don’t seem like likely words that need to be restricted.

The Xbox Live Arcade version of Quarrel has received nearly universal positive reviews, earning an 82 Metacritic score.