Words With Friends

Another addiction. Fine. Leave less time for me to be involved with crack.

A friend got me started playing Words with Friends a few weeks ago. It is the online word game that looks as much like Scrabble as Lindsay Lohan looks like Lindsay Lohan!

Another addiction. Fine. Leave less time for me to be involved with crack.

Like chess-by-mail Words with Friends is played a move at a time when you have the time. Moves can take seconds, hours or days. The game is understanding.

This whole thing is reminiscent of my introduction to competitive Scrabble. It was the mid 70s. I was living in Center City Philadelphia. My neighbor, better educated and from a Scrabble playing family, challenged me to a game. This was like being asked to play HORSE by LeBron James.

It took 20 more games before I finally won.

Over time I’ve learned some Scrabble strategies and arcane words with Qs and Js. This skillset translates directly to Words with Friends. I’ve been mainly successful, though as with my Philadelphia experience when I lose I want a quick rematch.

Here’s the problem. Words with Friends is Zynga. Zynga is the Farmville, Mafia Wars company. In the dictionary next to the word annoying: Zynga.

As soon as I started to play I started getting requests. Zynga puts out the word and as far as I can tell I can’t stop them. On my smartphone’s Words with Friends app there’s a note which says I have 1078 friends waiting to play!

Last night a Facebook friend sent me this:

UnFriended u u snot;)!!

He was upset I’d turned him down for a match. He later said he was kidding, but I’m sure there’s a grain or two of truth there. He’s not the only person I’ve turned down.

At the moment I’m playing some relatives, old friends and TV colleagues. If I want to stay employed I don’t have time for any more!

I can’t stand to lose.

16 thoughts on “Words With Friends”

  1. Hahaha Good Post Geoff.. But, I guarantee you wont beat me. Never lost and Scrabble Champion of University of New Haven.

  2. I play and I always see your name pop up. I figured you had too many requests, so I never bothered asking. A friend turned me on to a great “helper” website if you need assistance. Personally, I think it’s cheating, but if you are playing against someone who uses it, you almost have to as well. Email me if you want it.

  3. And now I want to play Brad. Not because I think
    I can beat him but because he’ll teach me things I can use to beat friends haha!

  4. I’m astonished you haven’t played before this, it blew up on the iPhone LONG before they bothered porting it to Android and added FB integration. Aside from Instagram it was the 1 app I was waiting FOREVER to see on Android.

    Honestly, I like Wordfeud better, less Zynga-y…and that’s the original Scrabble of Android, however nobody uses it like WWF. Are notifications that it’s your turn buggy for you too, or is it just my phone?

  5. Scrabble games are banned in this household ever since 2007 thanksgiving where I beat everyone with a margin so high my wife and her family refuses to even let me play even using rules such as no multiple words in one go, and no 2 letter words…

    I love the English language I studied the scrabble dictionary, memorised as many 2 and 3 letter words as I could. I love the game recently I found out the local library has a scrabble day so I fully intend to go down and have a game or two. I have played online no the game you played here but here is my problem…

    The subtle differences between British English and American English finds me out too many times simple words like colour and color might not sound much but that extra letter is sometimes the difference between a double word score and nothing much…..

    Still glad your enjoying the game, I too think Zynga is the most annoying company on facebook

  6. I’ve got 6 games going right now. And I am winning 3 of them. I was winning all of them except those with a very competitive old friend until my niece managed to get 108 points with the word SQUARE. I may just burn out.

  7. I played for awhile on my IPhone but I would take so long to decide on a word that I was driving myself crazy.
    I refuse to play Scrabble live with my sister because she’s smart and smug about it!

  8. Yes. Wordfeud. I’ve been playing since alpha days – Same style of game – better interface and it’s not Zynga. Just the download size of the client will make you realize how much bloat is in the Zynga version. I’m jimheem on there is you want to get schooled 😉

  9. I’ve become addicted to this game. A friend and I have been playing for about a week now, and we can’t stop! (Oh know, WordFeud Anon anyone?)

  10. Ty & I play on his iPad with our neighbor and a few friends. Love this.

    Beautiful photo of the orchard. If you are going by the house stop by and say hello. There are some great photo ops for you & Clicky. The day the storm started the backyard was covered in a beautiful covering of snow. (sorry Healine) Beautiful red fox appeared in the middle of the yard.

    Ready for some more snow. :^) Hope to see you all soon. Love to the family.

  11. Hi Geoff! I’ve actually been pretty lucky with not having a ridiculous amount of requests to play. Mind you if I played more often from Facebook I might (much prefer to play on my iPad). I’m fairly new to the game (since about July)… but I’m getting to the point of finally being able to beat people! I still struggle a lot with V’s and Z’s. It always seems that I get a full rack of consonants. I admit fully though that I will use a cheat app called Cheats & Words to get out of those situations when I’m really stuck. What I am impressed about the Words with Friends game, is that I find myself using a larger vocabulary in everyday conversations. So it might be a time consumer and threaten employment 🙂 but it definitely keeps the brain working. Johanna.

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