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# Review: Words With Friends
- URL: https://www.killscreen.com/review-words-friends/
- Published: 2011-12-23T09:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2015-11-17T14:34:33.000Z
- Description: If you’ve ever played Scrabble, by taking days in between turns and trying out random combinations of letters to see what fits, then you’ve played Words With Friends.
- Author: Drew Millard
- Tags: Review, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2024-07-26 09:39

In a way, reviewing [*Words With Friends*](http://www.wordswithfriends.com/?ref=killscreen.com), the now-ubiquitous *Scrabble*\-esque smartphone app, seems pointless—you already know what it is, and if you don’t you should by now, and a review isn’t going to change how you feel about it (or don’t). I guess what I’m really trying to say is *Words With Friends* is *Scrabble*, and *Scrabble* is *Words With Friends*. Except it’s not.

My ex-girlfriend and I played a lot of *Words With Friends* when we were dating. She beat my ass every single time. But here’s the thing. If we’d ever played a game of *Scrabble*, I’m sure I would have at least not lost by several hundred points. Because *Words With Friends* rewards having the tenacity of a cockroach, and it does not reward having a large vocabulary. I am not saying my ex is a cockroach. She is very nice.

What makes *Words With Friends* expressly different from *Scrabble* is that the former allows you to throw up as many combinations of letters as you can think up, whereas in *Scrabble* you can challenge your opponents and let Noah Webster tell you whether or not “kex” and “coled” and “rand” are words; and if they’re not, you get penalized. And the *Words* internal dictionary is the most infuriatingly accepting dictionary in the entire universe. The basic rule of *Scrabble* is that if you’re trying to play a word that seems fishy, you probably shouldn’t actually be playing that word, because your opponent might challenge you. If you’re not certain it’s a word, then you essentially have a 50/50 chance of having your turn penalized. With *Words*, meanwhile, you’re just slinging shit at a wall and seeing what sticks.

Here’s another differentiating factor: The *Words* board is slightly different from a *Scrabble* board. I’m 80-percent certain that Zynga With Friends (formerly Newtoy) did this because it keeps them from having the *Scrabble* people sue the pants off of them for stealing their game. But it also creates interesting new loopholes that let you play the *Words* board to your strategic advantage. It’s been heretofore established that in *Words* your actual ability to compose words is less important than in actual *Scrabble* (and it’s completely negated if you’re one of those guileless souls who isn’t above visiting one of the many anagram generators on the ’net), so savvy tile placement often determines who goes home happy. Your general offensive tactic should be similar to that of the coach of a high-level soccer game: force everything to the outside as soon as possible. Then, you need to trick your opponent to play a word on the Double Word square located one row of squares inside the board, so that they set you up to hit paydirt on a Triple Word square. In fact, that’s the main strategy: *Never let your opponent play off the Triple Word squares*.

You’re just slinging shit at a wall and seeing what sticks.

But there’s another mitigating factor to the game that people tend to completely forget. When you’re on your iPhone, and your opponent is on their iPhone, the flow of a conventional *Scrabble* game is interrupted. When you play *Scrabble*, there’s a socially acceptable time limit between moves, before your opponent gets annoyed and doesn’t want to be your friend anymore. For the sake of argument, let’s say this time is about three and a half minutes. Meanwhile, you can take three and a half *days* between your moves in *Words* if you want. This has two ramifications. One, you tend to just play off of whatever word your opponent just played, because you’ve probably lost sight of your overarching strategy, and the game highlights the most recent word played. Two, you tend to play really, really long words, because you can take as much time to think about your letters as possible. This effective lack of a play clock completely changes the nature of the game. And that, (words with) friends, is why Zynga With Friends has made a broken game.

Oh, and I technically won the last game of *Words With Friends* my ex and I ever played. She resigned.