Words with Friends

One of the most successful multiplayer online games over the past few years is Words with Friends (WwF) by Zynga with Friends. Based on Scrabble and other word games the player of Words with Friends has to make words from letters. The game is available for Android phones, iPhone and on Facebook. What makes it so special is the inclusion of online friends and opponents. Thats why it is often described as the best game in history of letters.

Who invented Words with Friends?

What happens if two brothers have a creative day? – Words with Friends! Probably it wasn’t that simple, but at least the fact that the brothers Dave & Paul Bettner and their crew developed Words with Friends in 2009 is correct. Dave previously worked for Microsoft on the Halo Wars and the Age of Empires games. Also Paul has been building video games for many years. It was merely a matter of time before both of them put their talents together.

Words with Friends rules

Words with Friends is similar to the famous Hasbro game called Scrabble. You can make words with altogether 104 tiles with the following scores:
1 point for E ×13, A ×9, I ×8, O ×8, T ×7, R ×6, S ×5
2 points for D ×5, N ×5, L ×4, U ×4
3 points for H ×4, G ×3, Y ×2
4 points for B ×2, C ×2, F ×2, M ×2, P ×2, W ×2
5 points for V ×2, K ×1
8 points for X ×1
10 points for J ×1, Q ×1, Z ×1
2 blank tiles with 0 points
To start you get seven tiles out of this tile pool. Now you have to think and make a word from these letters and place it on a star in the center of the board. You opponent, who can be a Facebook friend or random partner, has to add another word horizontally or vertically so that at least one tile is shared. Then it is your turn again. Multiple words with the same play are possible. For every word you get points depending on the score of the tiles. Additionally, there is the possibility to get special points by using squares on the grid that double or triple either the value of the tile on it or your created word.
There are four buttons to make this process more bubbly. The Swap button is to get completely new tiles. The Shuffle button is to shuffle tiles on the tile line and get different letter placements. Thus you can see how to make words out of these letters. The Pass button passes the turn to your opponent. And finally the Resign button that is to admit your defeated. Otherwise the winner is the player with the highest points in the end. Up to 20 games can be played simultaneously.

ENABLE – the word list of Words With Friends

There are rules that clarify which words you are allowed to create. Words labelled as part of speech such as loanwords, colloquial words, slang, now obsolete words etc., can be used. However, proper nouns, abbreviations, prefixes and suffixes standing alone or words that require hyphens or apostrophes are forbidden. Altogether there are about 173,000 words that can be created.

Most of them derive from a word list called ENABLE. This is short for Enhanced North American Benchmark Lexicon. It is a public domain list and it is used by many word games.

Scrabble vs. Words With Friends

The most obvious difference between Words With Friends and a conventional Scrabble game is the socializing aspect. You can chat with a friend from far away while playing the game. That would be the answer of a homo sapiens internetus, a human being that always needs to have a smart phone in his hands. Another advantage of Words With Friends are the four above mentioned buttons: Pass, Shuffle, Swap and Resign which are usually manual options in a Scrabble game. Here you only need to push a button and things are getting done for you. Kidding aside, Words With Friends is really a fun game, especially online and with friends, and sometimes hard brain work!
There are also some variations in the scoring. The values of the tiles are slightly different in both games. Whenever all seven tiles on the rack are played in one turn a Words With Friends player gets 35 bonus points. In Scrabble you get 50 points.
To put it in a nutshell, Scrabble can be good for family evenings and Words With Friends is fun when you have a few minutes while waiting on a bus or you need some distraction from work.

Love for word games

Zynga claims to have up to 20 million monthly users. It’s no wonder that there is a huge amount of potential singles, sharing the love for word games. For example Chicagoans Megan Lawless and Jasper Jasperse get to know each other through the ability of making words from letters. Jasperse was searching for a random opponent and was connected to Megan Lawless. They competed to construct the best words on the Words with Friends smartphone game and found love. A connection for life.
After a few games they begun to chat. Sentences become longer and maybe more personal. Finally, they decided to meet and fell in love. Now they are happily married and lifelong Words with Friends partners.

Addicted to Words with Friends

Another less romantic story happened to Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock actor, at Los Angeles International Airport on his way to New York. Baldwin never landed there but rather had to stay where he was just because of Words with Friends. He was so much addicted to Words with Friends that he was willing to leave a plane for it, said Baldwin’s spokesman. The background is as follows: as usually passengers had been asked to switch off their cell phones during the takeoff. Baldwin didn’t want to be distracted while playing his game, didn’t bother and ignored all instructions. This ended up with a booting out.

Words with Friends Cheat

Do you know our Words with Friends Cheat. It is a word generator which helps you to make words from letters especially for Words With Friends, using the right point system, letter distribution and of course the ENABLE word list. Try the Words with Friends Cheat.

Not enough? Have a look at our Strategy Guide for Words with Friends.