Words with Friends Review

Mike Rohde, Executive Editor

February 25, 2010

Words with Friends is basically Scrabble for the iPhone. It's highly addictive, strangely compelling, and if you're competitive, it will have you coming back for more and more and more. Even if you've never been a fan of Scrabble, this is a word game that you can get into quickly. You play against friends or strangers and the game goes at your own pace. You can even have multiple games running simultaneously. That way, if one game isn't going so well for you, at least you have the possibility of doing well in other games!

Finding people to play against is not difficult. Words with Friends allows you to announce challenges to all of your Twitter and Facebook peeps. Chances are, someone you know is already playing and is just itching for a new game.

Game play is relatively simple but mastering the game takes time and patience. To play, you simply place your tiles on the board to form words either vertically or horizontally. Keep your eyes open for the high scoring squares that allow you to earn triple letter or double word scores. Scoring like that can put you in the lead pretty easily. After you form a word, the game updates and it's your challengers turn.

The challenger receives a push notification (if they set it up) that it's their turn to play. You can have up to a few days to play your turn before you're disqualified. Chances are though, you and your challenger will be taking turns every few hours or so.

At the end of the game, there is a button for a re-match, and before you know it Words with Friends will become one of your most used apps. There is a free version of Words with Friends available in the apps store and if you get tired of the ads you can buy the ad-free version.