[I'm in partial sympathy with this sentiment. I do believe that the official Scrabble dictionary is far too lenient. On the other hand, about 75% of the words which the curmudgeons complain are "esoteric" are found in perfectly normal dictionaries as well. Get out your Merriam Webster and look up alae or xu, and you'll find them there. That said, there are plenty more among the 25% that I'd like to see purged from the rolls.

[Unless you're preparing for competitive play, there's really no reason you need to use the official Scrabble dictionary. When I used to play regularly with my mother we always used Merriam Webster's Collegiate as our arbiter. For Boggle, our house rules included the provision that you can only score for a word if you know what it means and your opponent has heard of it. Obviously, that sometimes requires a judgment call, but that's no problem for friendly play. We never used that rule for Scrabble, but I see no reason why you couldn't.

[A recent addition to my list of backburner projects that I might get around to doing some day is to make a webpage that combines a list of useful Scrabble words with discussion of what the words mean and how they are used in real life.]