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New Scrabble word - geocache - first ever chosen by gamers

Players play scrabble at 2011 World Scrabble Championship in Warsaw October 15, 2011. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel

By Fausto Giovanny Pinto WARWICK, Rhode Island (Reuters) - There's a new word in play on the Scrabble game board: geocache. The word, a verb meaning to track down items as part of a game using a Global Positioning System device, beat out 15 other nominated words in an online fan vote to select the newest addition to The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary. It's the first change in nearly a decade to the beloved board game in which players build words - and earn points - using alphabet letter tiles, said Hasbro, the Pawtucket, Rhode Island, maker of Scrabble. It's also the first time the players' dictionary has included a word chosen by fans. "Scrabble fans are passionate about the words they get to play in the game, so we were thrilled to get them involved in selecting a new word," Jonathan Berkowitz, Hasbro's vice president of marketing, said on Thursday. "We... are looking forward to adding geocache as a legal, playable word," Berkowitz said. Geocache beat out other popular choices such as bitcoin, cosplay, ew and the runner-up, zen. The words were nominated by fans on Hasbro's Game Night Facebook page in March and the voting took place April 2-10. While the next edition of the dictionary, which will include geocache, will not be available until later this year, players competing in national Scrabble competitions will be able to use the word. (Reporting by Fausto Giovanny Pinto; Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Gunna Dickson)