The Jolly Gamesman and His Many Toys
Words With Friends for the iPhone & iPod Touch
BUQSHA FAQIRS QANATS QINDAR QINTAR QIVIUT QWERTY SHEQEL TRANQS UMIAQS…A quick Google search has gone and proven to me that Scrabble is bullshit. Did you know that ‘Qiviut’ is the wool of the muskox? I didn’t, and neither does anyone I know I imagine, yet I’m sure I will see this in someone’s ‘Words with Friends’ game.
Words with Friends is as close to Scrabble as you can get without a lawsuit. For those not familiar with the rules of Scrabble, they are as follows: Two players are given a set of tiles with letters on them. Each letter contains a point value with the harder to use letters, such as Q and Z, worth more points than a common consonant or vowel. The game board consists of squares for you to lay out your best words. Your points are tabulated by the length of your word, complexity of your word, and if any of your letters land on a modifier square. Modifiers can either increase the value of the letter on it, or the value of the word. Once you have used your initial round of letters, replacements are given to you to continue spelling and building off of words on the board.
I love the idea of Scrabble as an “in person” game, but when you switch to the anonymity of playing with friends over the Internet, I lose any and all interest in the game. It’s one thing to have a dictionary in front of you to flip to the Q’s to find a word, but when you can fire up a website, then the challenge really becomes who can bullshit the best.
Words with Friends had a great start when I was playing it in person with people, but once I stepped out of that situation and was getting push notifications at 2:30 am that so and so got a shit load of points for using “QI,” I decided that the game is no longer about who can think of the most appropriate word, but who can lay out their best Internet constructed word to get the most out of the modifiers on the board.
After every turn in the free version of Words with Friends, you are subjected to a painless advertisement that you can skip through. My favourite feature of this app is that you can have multiple games running at the same time, and using the iPhone / iPod Touch’s push notification system, you are alerted whenever it is your turn.
While not everyone I know who is playing this game is using an online helper, I don’t have the patience to find a word using the supplied letters H, Y, U, N, J, E & D. For that reason, I have decided that if I were to play the game in person, I would suggest we modify the rules so that you can only use words that you can describe what they are or do without consulting a dictionary. Otherwise, I’m totally using ‘quey.’
~The Fine Print~
Free / A paid version is also available
