An avid Scrabble player? For years Scrabble has been used to turn a boring, mostly rainy, days into a fun and intellectual pastime. Back in the day the rules of the game was, mostly by elderly players, obeyed by. That lasted only so long as Words with Friends came along. The app game is among the most popular in the world with around 20 million active players.
Its popularity can be credited to the fact that you always have it with you on your phone, you can play against your friends and, like many of us do, you’re also able to play against random strangers from all over the world. Even though the game is overall identical, Words with Friends does have a few variations which are key to the game. Making those variations a habit can really start to block you at your Scrabble game. We decided to list the top 5 Words with Friends habit that can kill of your Scrabble A-game.
1. The endless try
Imagine the final penalty kicks at a soccer game. The striker gets ready and kicks the ball which is stopped by the keeper. The striker gets back in his position and tries again. Essentially, this exact feature happens each time you try a word. In the physical Scrabble game whenever a word is placed on the board the opponent gets the turn to check whether it’s a valid word or not.
With Words with Friends, as you’re playing online, you can place a word you came up with after which the game will let you know if the word is acceptable for play or not. If not, you get to try again, endlessly. This gives way to try out combination after combination until you succeed at finding a word you can place on the board to impress your opponent.
2. Word updates
Saying that Words with Friends has a different dictionary compared to Scrabble wouldn’t be right. Reason is that the game has no official release of all the acceptable words they have in their lexicon. One will notice that the official site refers visitors to ENABLE (stands for Enhanced North American Benchmark Leixcon) as a source for words. Occasionally you’ll see words added in the tune of ZEN or TEXTING.
Just like you’d see in Scrabble, many words that need a hyphen, apostrophe (sign which is used to indicate the omission of 1 or more letters in a word), abbreviations, pre & suffixes are considered a no-no. One difference worth mentioning is that in Words with Friends derogatory words or slurs aren’t allowed. Avid WWF players who’d previously played Scrabble were complaining about the words “ZA” and “QI” not being allowed. From the latest sources it’s confirmed they’re now acceptable words. Another major bad habit, ra-ra welcome to the digital age, is that players can update the application and more words will be added to the game. The simplest and safest way to get into competitive game play is to get familiar with the official Scrabble word list.
3. The wait
You’ll often see that Words with Friends players take an awful long time to make their next move. Usually players tend to look at their rack for a while, then watch another episode of their favorite TV show and check their rack a couple times more before they come up with a word (the worst players might make the next move a day or two later). In Scrabble this will get you on a losing streak fast! With the original board game players must construct a word from their rack within a reasonable time frame. Another bad habit might be checking your game while you’re crossing the street which maybe dangerous if you’re not paying attention to traffic.
4. Bingo with a different effect
It might sound a little strange for new players, but Scrabble and Words with Friends also have a bingo. This happens whenever all seven letters are used to construct a word on the board, players in Scrabble are given an extra 50 (bingo) points for their skill. However, this only applies for Scrabble and not for Words with Friends. The most you can get for a bingo in WWF are a mere 35 points. This can mean one thing; playing strategic medium-sized words in WWF will yield higher points than playing a 7 letter word (especially if you’re able to place letters onto double and triple letter tiles). One good example of this is playing the letter X onto a triple letter tile, this will instantly earn you 28 points for that placement.
5. Board difference
For the more experienced players of both games it’s obvious that both boards are different from one another in the way they’re set up. For instance, Scrabble is set up in an X shaped board where players are most commonly working toward more toward the corners compared to playing Words with Friends. Other major differences are that Scrabble (100) has fewer tiles compared to WWF (has 104 tiles). The difference that this makes for the players is the overall distribution of the tiles are completely different in both games. Differences are that Words with Friends has 1 more D, E, T, S, two more H’s, 1 less N and I.