I’ve always been a word-game buff, be it Scramble, Wheel of Fortune, or generic word find puzzles in Highlights magazine.

I’m guessing newtoyinc gets around the “Scrabble” copyright issue by calling it “Words with Friends” – also, astute players will notice a different pattern of double-letter, triple-letter, double-word and triple-word tiles. 

However, during last week’s pool league, Ren and I started talking about modifications that should be pretty easy to code in the app that might make it more fun for people. 

We think that when you create a new game, you should be able to select the “type” of game:

Lowest Score Wins

Self-explanatory.  Now you have to avoid the tile score modifiers, and hope the OTHER guy gets the Q, Z, J or X.  (perhaps you already wish that?).  I think this option might get more people willing to play.

Word Length Bonus

Instead of just getting the points on the letters and whatever tile modifiers you place the word on, you get bonus points for the length of the word.  In standard rules, you only get a bonus for using all 7 tiles, but it would be an interesting dynamic to also get, say 5 extra points for a 5-letter word, 10 points for a 6 letter word, and an additional 5 points for every letter after that.

Another variation of this would to be to also count appended words instead of just use of tiles out of the tray.  Now “e” + “d” are a lot more valuable!

Speed Games

Another interesting type of play would be to actually play head to head and not allow turn-by-turn delays.  You get 1 minute to play, and that’s it.  If you don’t take your turn in the allotted time, you lose an extra turn (your opponent gets to play twice).

Can you think of some?

btw #1: if you want to play me, my username is in the picture above.  Warning: sometimes I play several times in a day, and there have been times when I went a week without playing my move.

btw #2: STROBING is *so* a word!  ARGH.  Two TL’s and a TW’s, not to mention using all my letters!!!

(and no, there was NO place to play “storing” or ”sorting”)