scrabble

Words With Friends is essentially an Android and iPhone alternative to the classic board game Scrabble. You can choose to play against a friend from your contact list, find a friend by username, play a random opponent, or pass-and-play with a friend on a single device.

Just as in the classic board game, you are given seven lettered tiles with which you must create words--vertically or horizontally--on the board. Your goal, with the help of scattered bonus squares, is to score more points than your opponent before the tiles run out. The great thing is that you can play at … Read more

The word games continue to proliferate on the Kindle, with Scrabble following Shuffled Row and Every Word onto Amazon's popular e-book reader. The only difference this time is that Scrabble actually costs money ($4.99), making it the first paid game to hit the Kindle Store.

So far the reviews have been good. While only a handful of buyers have rated the game, they've all given it high marks, saying it moves quickly and is easy to play. You get a few game modes to choose from and you can either play solo or "pass N' play&… Read more

Don't worry, everyone. The Scrabble you know and love isn't changing.

When I read this morning that starting this July, the Scrabble rules will change to allow the use of proper nouns, I had to check today's date to make sure it wasn't somehow still April Fools' Day.

But no, according to every calendar I could find, today is April 6, and so the story from the BBC seemed to have been the real deal. In that story, a Mattel spokesperson is quoted as saying the rule change, which is expected to be introduced in a … Read more

Remember Scrabulous, the Facebook-powered Scrabble knockoff that was all the rage a couple years back? I was a serious addict, but lost interest after all the name changes, lawsuits, redesigns, etc.

Thanks to my evil friend Denny, my addiction is reborn--and mobile. Words With Friends is a two-player crossword challenge that offers turn-based, Scrabulous-like competition. It's not perfect, but I'm loving it.

The game lets you complete online against random players and/or friends. (Built-in Facebook/Twitter links let you post an invitation as a status update.) You can have up to 20 matches going at once, with … Read more

Word Scramble 2 is a free, ad-supported word-find game in which you quickly search for words formed by adjacent letters on a grid. The simple interface makes good use of the iPhone and iPod Touch touch screen: you trace words with your finger (three letters or longer) on a four-by-four or five-by-five letter grid. Light-up letters and bobbling animation provide nice feedback (especially since you're obscuring the letters you're choosing with your finger), and the game tracks your score, time remaining, and how many words you've found out of the number of possible words. (Although be warned … Read more

There are several word games to choose from for the iPhone, but WordsWorth adds just enough unique features and in-game bonuses to make it one of our favorites. You can play two different game types--Timed and Classic--in which you are challenged to make words by connecting letters from hexagonal tiles. Each word you make erases those tiles from the board, letting new tiles slide into their place.

Just looking for words and getting points on our way to the end of the round made us like the game, but WordsWorth offers a few other twists to make the game more … Read more

The Scrabble keyboard could be a bit dangerous for Scrabble nerds like me. I suddenly imagine myself dropping words like "quixotic" and "evzone" into e-mails and blogs just to up my score.

If I could avoid such Pavlovian point-chasing behavior, I'd really like to get my hands on this cool-looking wood peripheral from Datamancer.net, a purveyor of custom steampunk keyboards. Most of the keys are made from real Scrabble tiles that were hand-beveled and built onto a USB, clicky, mechanical-switch keyboard. LED lights shine through the Num, Scroll, and Caps keys.

The keyboard was … Read more

Hasbro is apparently content to call its contest with the makers of Scrabulous a draw.

The toy maker on Friday withdrew its copyright and trademark lawsuit filed against the creators of the ad-supported online application, according to court documents cited in an Associated Press report.

The game, which rose to fame when its creators turned it into an embeddable Facebook application, was a word game that resembled the classic board game Scrabble. The game boasted an astonishing half-million daily users on Facebook, but was removed from the social-networking site not long after the lawsuit was filed in July.

The game … Read more

Even though Jeff and Wilson are having an "off day," the show is still as ridiculous and irrelevant as always, replete with stories about stuffing monkeys up your shirt, dirty Nintendo Scrabble words, and the worst Top 10 gadgets list of all time. Oh, and be sure to listen until to the end to hear Wilson completely destroy the 4th wall.

Wilson and Jeff are in some kind of slump, so it's up to me (Yu) to cheer them up, and I think a combination of funny stories and a heartfelt air hug sesh gets the job … Read more