Scrabble. Any time. Any where.
For some people, Scrabble is an addiction. They dream of clearing off all their wooden tiles and making triple words. I’m not one of those people. I’m a terrible Scrabble player which, I think, contributes to me shying away from the game whenever possible. Why is this a problem? My wife LOVES Scrabble! Years ago she figured out that I was never going to be a Scrabble fan, and when she did force me to play the occasional game, she usually ended up helping me.
I’ve always felt a bit bad about not liking Scrabble, so as a part of a master plan to get better at Scrabble, I bought the Scrabble game for the iPhone. I’m surprised to say, I was hooked.
The game itself is very nicely designed and one of the better iPhone apps, I’ve seen. The developers over at Electronic Arts have done a pretty amazing job of cramming the whole Scrabble board onto your iPhone and provided for very intuitive controls. After even just a few minutes, you get the hang of the zooming and scrolling. The shuffle feature was key for me, as it quickly let me iterate through the possible combinations of my tiles. When even the shuffling wasn’t enough to help me find a word, the “Best Word” feature came to the rescue. They limit you to only 4 best words, but fair is fair.
My wife tells me that the computer player isn’t very good, not that I could tell, it beats me all the time. Not to worry though. There is a multiplayer mode that works over wifi!