tools and articles for letters and words

How to Play Words with Friends

How to Play Words With Friends: A Word Game Review

created on by  in Mobile word games
4 Comments 4

Thousands of users cannot be wrong: Words with Friends is one of the most popular word game apps, without a doubt. If you are not already into the game with letters and words, we’ll show you how to play Words with Friends.

Tiles and Letters in the Word Game

First you can download the app or you can open the game on Facebook. There are different options for starting a game: To play with friends of course, against a random opponent, or search a username for someone to challenge to a game.

At the start of a game, you get seven letter tiles. You have to use these tiles to make a high-scoring word. All in all there are 104 tiles available: 102 with letters and two tiles called blanks that can each replace one of the letters from the alphabet. Each letter tile has a special point count. And of course you can only use 52 tiles in one game. Your opponent has the other 52.

Point Counts in Words with Friends

A=1 D=2 G=3 J=10 M=4 P=4 S=1 V=5 Y=3
B=4 E=1 H=3 K=5 N=2 Q=10 T=1 W=4 Z=10
C=4 F=4 I=1 L=2 O=1 R=1 U=2 X=8 *=0

How to Start a Game

The starting point is the plus in the middle of the board. You can begin your word there or position any of the letters of your word at this spot. You can make words horizontally or perpendicularly, but not diagonally.

You can lay a word with more than four letters in such a way that one letter lands on a premium square, the DW field. There are other premium squares like DL = double letter score, TL = triple letter score, DW = double word score, and TW = triple word score.

It would be ideal to get a bingo at the beginning of a game. You can accomplish this by making a word with all seven of your tiles in one stroke.

Check the Words in Words with Friends

Before sending the word, you can check the word frequency. You will find a little green star for this next to the word on the board. A barometer shows you how often the word occurs in your favorite language. You can check the meaning of one word in the dictionary too.

Basis of the Word List

The list of acceptable words in WWF is based on the Enhanced North American Benchmark Lexicon: ENABLE. It is a public domain list and it is used by many other word games as well. There are some modifications in Words with Friends: Proper nouns, abbreviations, prefixes and suffixes standing alone, or words that require hyphens or apostrophes are not allowed. Also words that are longer than 16 letters can’t be used, because there won’t be enough space on the board for those words. And of course, other words are added from time to time.

How to Play the WWF Challenges

Every Monday morning you get a challenge with new goals for the week to earn a certain total score. The goal can be higher or lower than the one the week before. You now have time until Saturday night to reach the goal. There are special badges for every conclusion. You can find these badges on your profile if you have an iPhone. You haven’t gotten any bonus points yet…but you can improve your knowledge of how to play Words with Friends.

How to Play Words with Friends with Us

At the beginning it is easier to make long words or lay down bonus words. But the less space there is on the board, the more difficult it becomes. That’s why you must have strategies for playing WWF.

You Can Learn for the Game

One of the best ways to improve your Words with Friends knowledge is to learn the two- and three-letter words. The short words are a good way to build bridges between words on the board. We listed the three letter words for you and you can now learn them with our document below: Three Letter Words in WWF.

High-Scoring Words in the Game

There are high-scoring letters like J, Q, and Z in the game. For each letter, you get ten points. That’s why it is good to know some words that have these letters. We help you with our articles on word-grabber.com. Just read about words with J right here. Other articles about words with Q or Z in WWF will follow soon.


Our Words with Friends Help will give you the right words if you are in trouble. Here you can look for the words that are possible in Words with Friends and learn how to get better at playing Words with Friends.

Tags: ,

More like this
Word Cookies Review
Are you a word genius in WWF? Prove it by making words with these letters
How to score high in your Word Chums Game

image sources

4 Responses

  1. How do you create an username to list for playing Words with Friends. Can you play with someone next to you on the same iPad?

    • Hi Marcia, you can create an username in Edit Profile section of Words with Friends. As for the playing with someone next to you on the same iPad, I am not sure how would that work. Perhaps you can install two versions of Words with Friends, paid and free one. Or one of you can use Words with Friends on Facebook and another one the app.
      Selena

  2. I have noticed several times that prefixes are allowed; also capitalized words. And there should be some attempt to include definitions for all words that are allowed since they can easily be found on various dictionaries online.

Comments are closed.