They’ve completely changed the board at Lexulous – I guess more fallout from the lawsuit from the Scrabble folks. Bonus squares are completely differently arranged, and go to 4x for letters and 3x for words. You no longer get an automatic DWS for the first move (and there’s no way to set yourself up for a DLS on it with a five-letter word).
You also get 8 letters, though apparently you only need 7 for the bingo.
There is a place to play practice games, and I’m definitely going to do so – I went straight into playing the new version and it’s completely disorienting – all the strategy stuff that has become second nature is completely worthless, because it’s not “natural” where the bonus squares are.
Do you suppose that the folks at Scrabble wanted to work out a partnership with Scrabulous but they got all stubborn and told them to fuck off, making the conflict necessary?
Seems like the two could have come to a mutually beneficial arrangement.
No, my guess is that the Scrabble people were the hardasses – it’s their trademark and they need to protect it.
I tried to load a practice game there last night and couldn’t – oh well, guess I’ll just see if an actual person wants to play an unrated game or two. That will actually be better practice.
I don’t think so. Although, it tracks how many games a player abandons, and you can limit your “game seeking” to people that rarely or never abandon (under Options–> Set Formula).
Okay. I’ll try it again tonight. I definitely prefer classic Scrabble. I wish the regular Scrabble people would just put up an online version of their game.
Are you Happy Lendervedder over there, too?
Just played a solitaire game over there – scored 879 points. Since I played all the tiles, we can cut it in half – 440. Hm. Seems a bit high, eh?
The strategy changes are interesting – because all the big multipliers are around the edges, it makes sense to hold on to the high-scorers for a long time. I can see that that could easily get you in trouble against a good player.
Still want to find “real” Scrabble, though. Do they maintain ratings at ISC?
