Words With Friends App: An Award-Winning Crossword Puzzle Game

Not long ago, a family member gave me the Apple iPad 2 as a gift. Not having an iPhone and having never used a high-tech tablet before, I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I surf the web, tweet and use Facebook all from my Blackberry daily, so it’s not as though I really needed the iPad. Nonetheless, I graciously accepted the gift.

Now a few months later, I’ve used it to play a few different apps, to look at websites on a bigger screen while traveling, and to download music and movies from time to time. But I have to say, my favorite thing to do on it is play Words With Friends. It’s a word-building game in the form of a crossword puzzle modeled after Scrabble.

Different spaces on the board earn you more points than others, and the goal is to use up all your letters connecting real words to each other with higher scores than your opponent. Friends can search for you to begin a game once you tell them your username. If you’re into strategical thinking, have a decent vocabulary and love to best your friends in spelling or grammar, this game’s for you. The app is available on Android and iOS systems, as well as Facebook.

Admittedly, I don’t play it a lot because it can be time consuming. Games can last for hours, days, weeks and longer depending on how much attention you give a particular game, meaning when a friend makes a move, you can respond with your move at your leisure. That, in addition to a few other things, are what make me love WWF.

Here are some of my other favorite parts about Words With Friends:

You get to show off your vocabulary and dig deep into your brain to find those words you don’t use much.
You can test various letters together if you think they may form a word without being penalized if they don’t.
If you place letters on blocks with “TL,” “DL,” “DW,” or “TW” on them, you can earn double or triple points for individual letters or entire words, giving you points quickly.
It’s a game of strategy where you form words on certain blocks and connect words to each other in various directions to boost your score.
You can play real-life friends or random strangers. I’ve selected random strangers to play before, in order to practice for when I play real friends.
It’s unpredictable! Every time I start a game, I don’t know which letters the system will give me or when I’ll get a blank block to use as any letter in the alphabet.

If this all sounds like fun, give the game a try, but don’t blame me if it ends up occupying your days quickly. It tends to have that effect, especially in the beginning. Happy wording.