iPhone English: Words With Friends

Following my post on crosswords last year, I thought I’d share another recent addiction of mine with you. I have recently discovered a word game available on smart phones or online. It’s called Words With Friends ® Zynga

Words With Friends ® is a board game very similar to the game Scrabble ®, except that you can play against your friends using your smart phone. The board is 15 squares by 15 squares and each player is given 7 tiles. Each of the tiles has a letter on and the more common letters in English have a low score and the less frequent letters have a high score.

The aim of the game is to lay your tiles on the board to make a word. Longer words with less frequent letters score more points and when you lay a new word it must connect to your opponent’s word. The player with the highest score wins. To make it a bit more exciting, some of the squares allow you to get a double or triple word score, while some give you extra points for using a square with a double or triple letter score.

The nice thing about the game on the smart phones is that it tells you if you have spelt a word incorrectly or if you have invented a word which doesn’t exist. This means that you can experiment a bit, because you need to make a word with the highest score, with the letters you have available.

Playing with your classmates is a great way to have a bit of fun because you can play in your own time, so if you send a word to your friend in the morning, your friend can reply when they are ready to, a few minutes, hours or even days later. You can send text messages directly to your friend through the game, so you can ask them what a word means if you don’t know and you can compliment each other on good, unusual or interesting words.

Overall, it’s a really fun game. I’m currently playing 12 of my friends. I have learned lots of new words from them and I’ve got some really high scoring words. It’s a great way to learn new vocabulary, practice spelling and interact with your friends. I know it may sound a bit geeky but I’m interested in language, words and my friends and I love it.

By Ben

Glossary

smart phone (n.) - a phone which lets you communicate by the internet such as an Iphone

tiles (n.) - the pieces in the game with letters on

opponent (n.) - the person you compete against

triple (adj.) - 3 times or multiplied by 3

to compliment (v.) - to say something nice or positive about someone 

geeky (adj.) - being really interested in and excited about something many people think is boring