I searched over the last 2 years, and didn’t see this addressed, so here goes:
The rules say you play until all 104 tiles are used. That’s 104, total, right? Not 104 per player.
Is there any way of automatically keeping track of how many tiles have been played, or do you have to manually count all the time?
Similarly, is there any way to automatically count the score you get for a given word before playing it? I struggle sometimes even seeing the number value of the letters if the lighting isn’t good, plus it’s a PItA to do this if you don’t have a pen and paper handy. Or, is this considered “part of playing the game”?
Playing on an iPhone 4s, if that matters. Also, I’m in the middle of my first game, and I think I might be able to win!
Does every game have the same number of each letter? That is are there always x number of the letter “a”, y number of the letter “b”, etc.? I’m on my last few moves, all the tiles are dealt out and I want to be able to tell what letters my opponent has left.
I’m fairly certain it’s the same tile configuration each game. But the # of each tile left icon will tell you that for certain. You can start it up at the beginning of each game just to be sure.
It’s an add-on purchase, like the “# of tiles remaining” one.
There’s also one that will give a meter showing how good a word you have placed (after you put it on the board but before you hit “submit”) compared to what the best possible move would be.
On the iPhone version at least, you click “More” , then it is the 2nd icon from the left on mine. They call it “Tile Pile”. On the free version it’s a $0.99 add-on, not sure if you get it for free if you play the paid version.
Do they have an easy-to-use phone app that features random opponent matching?
I will say, however, that I find this hilarious. “Wow, now I can play Words With Friends using an actual game board and letter tiles – what a novel idea!”
I don’t think so. Once I was playing a very close game with a friend and afterward he sent me a screenshot to show me he had one letter left that he wasn’t able to use when the game was over. So I think the game ends when one of the players runs out of letters and there are no more to be drawn.
No they don’t have a phone app. But they do have an authoritative word source, thus when you play the word “fob” for instance, it will be allowed, unlike “words with friends.” The big advantage however is that it is an actual scrabble game. You can usually play day and night with very short wait for a partner, no advertisements or delays during games, game time set to your own liking (usually an hour or less) and various methods are offered to improve your game and your gaming experience.
You are right though, you cannot play it on the phone.
Here’s two rules some people may not be familiar with:
If a player uses all seven tiles in a single turn, an extra 35 points is awarded. While not common, this special bonus in the Words With Friends rules can be a big boost to the score.
Games continue until all tiles are used. Players alternate turns until the entire pool of tiles is used. When one player uses their last tile, they take all the points of the tiles held by the opponent.
I got another question, does the game take into account the relative strength of players (say, judging by their scores at end of game) when selecting random opponents, or are they truly random? And does the game give you “tough” tile racks if you are beating up on your opponent, or is it truly random? Being Dopers, we generally clean the clocks of most of our opponents, rarely losing, and we’ve noticed that of late a lot of our racks are either all vowels (maybe one or two consonants) or all consonants (one vowel, very common). We don’t much care, we still beat everyone almost all the time, but were wondering if the game tried to avoid or ameliorate mismatches.
I think there probably is something to that, although I’m not quite sure what criteria they employ. I’ve experienced the same and felt it was the intentional application of a handicap. It’ll sure put you in a defensive posture when you have no vowels and don’t draw any for several turns in a row.
I’ve sort of noticed the same thing myself, but am wondering if it’s just confirmation bias. There are a few players I play regularly with who I’m fairly evenly matched with and I still get the ‘tough’ racks in those games. Also, I seem to remember that they aren’t unusual even in board-game scrabble, which is done on random draw, of course.
There isn’t anyone who nearly always beats me, so I don’t know if you get significantly easier racks in those games. If you did, it suggests a strategy of poor starts and strong finishes.
What strategies do you guys use? I’m more prone to letting the chips fall and see who can make the most words, but a cousin I play with is all defense: he wants to block you from getting any TL or TW scores. It’s not unusual for a game to end with both of us in the 200s.
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