Words With Friends

Words with friends isn’t you, me, and a dictionary; it’s a take on Scrabble(TM) developed just for the iPhone and Touch. The play is the same but the board layout is unique.  You’ll find double word and triple letter scoring just not in the same spots.

WWF is entirely touch play, beginning with game selection.

Words with friends screenshot game selection

Games where it’s your move are displayed in time sequence from most recent opponent move to oldest. In the shot above you’ll notice the eyes. Those indicate your opponent is watching the game. Additionally, if a number is displayed on the line, it means you have chat messages waiting for you in the game.

Tap on any Words with line and the game is highlighted. The screen then slides to the left displaying the board.

Words with friends screenshot playing board

The game board has two views. Zoomed out if the default. Zoomed in allows you to move it around.

Words with friends screenshot zoomed game board

Playing is easy; just tap the letter and drag it onto the board. If it ends up on the wrong square, just tap and drag it again.  There are buttons to Play (submit), Recall (clear placed letters), swap (allows swapping letters, don’t preselect, select after hitting swap), and Resign.

Topping up the screen are the Games and Chat buttons. Games goes back to the sorted list. Chat takes you to chat just for that specific game.

Play isn’t instant or demanding. Each player takes their turn and then the game waits for the opponent to make their move. There is no game timer, nor nudge option.

The game uses built in spell check, preventing players from making illegal moves. As in Scrabble, words formed cross-wise also must work..

Locating other players is a bit odd. You can invite someone from your contact list, a random person, search for another player by name, or choose Pass and Play.

Pass and Play means you and your opponent play on the same iPhone versus each other. You just take a turn and pass the iPhone over.  I’ve not tried this mode out yet.

The game is crash free, plays with wireless, and has push notifications. Being so easy to pick up and play makes this a great value and an equally great time sink.

Words With Friends on iTunes Store

Above is a screenshot of the tile values for Lexulous, the word game, on Facebook. The tile values on Lexulous aren’t quite in line with official Scrabble rules.

This changes the strategy not at all in my book. The letter values are basically the same, and stagger the same. The Q and Z values are the only ones jumping more than 1.

Board layout has a bigger impact on strategy and play styles. The arrangement of bonus squares varies significantly between the two. This difference accounts for a noticeable difference in scoring and even swings in scoring.

Perhaps you’d like to challenge me on either game?
Join a Lexulous game on Facebook.
Join a Scrabble game on Facebook.

Yours,
Todd

@tojosan on Twitter

It’s alive! It’s alive. Scrabulous closed its doors to North American players not even 48 hours ago. This brought to a seeming end the fun of tens of thousands of players.

Today a new application has appeared in place of Scrabulous; it’s called Wordscraper.

Look familiar? It should be.

The folks at Scrabulous have resurrected the game with a new name, but with some new play options. This isn’t your same old Scrabble game.

Players design their own board layout, placing letter and word multiplier tiles. Tiles can be tagged individually with either a word or letter multiplier with ranges from 2x to 5x. The play is still turn based, and scoring is done the same. Players even get seven tiles per round.

It will be interesting to see if folks will dive right back into the game or not. To make it easier, the Scrabulous application was automatically replaced by Wordscraper. It appears that active games may have been kept as well.

Bonus feature? Once you design a board layout, you can load that for future games. Check out this link to see my creation to a classic Scrabble layout.

Will you join me for a game?

Love Scrabble? Use Facebook? Then you were probably among the hundreds of thousands of players of Scrabulous. Scrabulous was the game of Scrabble online.

Scrabulous was well liked not only for being a fun take on a well known word game, but for it’s interface. Stripped of any pretense of wood and plastic, play was fast and easy. Without fancy graphics or spinning pixels, players could concentrate on the words.

It’s gone now. Gone that is for those in the US and Canada. The rest of the world can still play. For the rest though, they now have the ‘official’ Scrabble game on Facebook.

Yes. The game company Hasbro has brought out yet another version of Scrabble to enjoy. This one has more bells and whistles. Sound effects and spinning pixels are there to spare.

According to the message above, Hasbro is looking at making some of those things optional. This will probably affect the number of folks that become regular players. But will that and speedier play be enough to move the masses that played on Scrabulous?

Will you take up playing Scrabble on Facebook? Will you find solace in other word games? What features will drag you in?

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Bloggers have shown Scrabulous quite a bit of love. Will they continue to do the same with Scrabble? Or will they put down some harsh words?