Words with Friends

If you have an iPhone, and these days who doesn’t, you’re most likely familiar with a game called “Words with Friends.”  There’s an app for that, and honestly, it’s driving me NUTS.

“Words with Friends” is basically the board game Scrabble, where you try to use the letters given to you at random to spell out words that will give you more points than your opponent.  Each letter is worth a certain number of points and placement is everything since you may land on a square giving you two or three times the total value of the letter or two to three times the value of the word.  There are bonus points for using all seven letters during your turn.  You go horizontally or vertically, and even a simple four letter word can bring a huge payday if it’s placed just right.

Incidentally, I come up with all kinds of four letter words while playing this game, but none of them can be placed on the board.

A couple of things fascinate me about “Words with Friends.”  First, unlike board games you might play at home, this game runs 24/7.  Since you’re playing on your iPhone, opponents can be located around the world, down the street or in your bed.  The bed option should be limited to a very select group of friends.
You may play a word at 8:30 Tuesday morning against someone, and not hear back from them until that afternoon, or even the next day.  Then, when you least expect it, and sometimes in overnight hours, you see where Kelsey at UGA or Lindy in New Orleans has hit pay dirt with “XYLOPHONE.”  To which I boldly add an “S” for “XYLOPHONES.”  That’ll show ‘em.

The other amazing aspect of this game is that it actually does the opposite of what you might think.  Being a word game, you would expect it to somehow enhance your vocabulary.  My grandmother used to keep a Webster’s dictionary close at hand when we played the old Scrabble, because you had to prove the word exists.  All of that is done automatically by “Words with Friends.”  And you learn what might appear as nonsense words actually work in conversation, at least somewhere on the planet.

Some two letter words are acceptable like, “AH, OW, XU.”  Go ahead and use one of those in a sentence, I dare you.  In a game with my wife, I tried the word “GOR,” and it actually took.  Of course, GOR refers to the Counter-Earth, an alternate-world setting for John Norman’s Chronicles of Gor (sometimes called the Gorean Saga), a series of twenty-eight novels that combine philosophy, erotica and science fiction.  Had no idea I was so well versed in geeky literature.

The game has encouraged me to take any guttural sound I might be familiar with and spell it out there on the board.  Placed just right, it might be worth something.

Another interesting feature on “Words with Friends” is you can flip the board over and engage in a chat with your opponent.  A little trash talking, if you will.  Normally, my friends use it to pass along encouragement like, “I am trouncing you,” “Are you still there?” and “Is this you or the dog playing?”

Some have tried to add a new dimension to the game by requiring each other to only use words related to a certain topic like cooking, sports or religion.

I write this blog post as a tribute to Lori, Adrienne, Carly, Doug, Jennifer, Karen, Kelsey, Lindy and Taylor, all of whom normally beat me by at least a 2-to-1 margin.  But with every match, I get a little BETTER and grow a little STRONGER.

So, try it out.  “Words with Friends” may be just the thing to bring this world together.  They say what the world needs now is LOVE.  Especially if you can place it on a Triple-Word and somehow spell it with a Q.