(Click the
above image to order and download the "Six Magic Letters" ebook about
winning Scrabble techniques and strategies.)
Index/Menu
Other
Highly Recommended Links:
|
BonusWords.com
Play
Scrabble Online free ®
Are
you looking to play Scrabble online - whether in real time Java or
Flash, Email Scrabble or IRC? Here are reviews of some of the best and
some of the weirdest options for a free online Scrabble game:
Four
categories of online Scrabble games are
reviewed here:
- Real-time,
person-to-person, web-based free Scrabble games.
Usually Java or Flash based.
- Real-time
person-to-person Internet Relay Chat (or similar) free Scrabble games.
These are not web-based and require special IRC (or similar) Scrabble
downloads to be installed.
- Free
Email Scrabble games.
- Free
Real-time 'player versus computer robot' online Scrabble games.
Category
1: Real-time, person-to-person, web-based free Scrabble games.
QuadPlex (No
longer free. Fees apply after a trial period.)
QuadPlex
is BonusWords.com's top recommendation in this Category, though the
recent change to being a pay-to-play site is a drawback. The number of
regular users has plummeted since the introduction of the fees, modest
though they still are. For real-time online Scrabble game enthusiasts,
don't be too quick to dismiss this site solely on the basis of fees.
There is a dearth of competitors in this category and a long line of
sites that have tried and failed with free models or advertising based
models. Presuming Mattel's lawyers (the intellectual property holders
outside of North America - and QuadPlex is a European owned and hosted
site) don't object to the fee-based model as they have been known to do
when another online Scrabble game site tried to do the same a year or
so ago, the fact that they are now fee-based probably gives users
greater security that the site will be well maintained and hosted on
fast servers, and unlikely to disappear in the manner of so many
predecessors.
QuadPlex
has it all. It offers you a choice between SOWPODS or TWL (almost
identical to OSPD3) Scrabble dictionaries, and even French and Danish
dictionaries. Their system is stable and fast, the games configurable
so that players can choose time limits per move or per game, and so
forth. Player ratings and rankings are also provided.
The
QuadPlex team are constantly adding extra features and listening to
player feedback to improve the site. I personally raised the matter of
a lack of a Privacy Statement on the site - and they rectified that to
my satisfaction in less than a day.
The
newest player in this category looks to have alot going for it. Before
I write a longer, more detailed review, I'd like to ask my visitors
(that means YOU) to go to BingoBinge, play a few
games, then send me some feedback of your experience. What do you think
are the good points and the bad points, the strengths and the
weaknesses, of Scrabble at BingoBinge? Click here to send me your
feedback.
Playsite 3.0 (Link now removed)
(Important Update - In August 2003, Playsite
ceased to offer Scrabble online. This review of Playsite Scrabble is
retained purely for reference purposes.)
Always
plenty of players available to play a game with you. This Scrabble
game is played in real time with a Java-based game. The
inbuilt dictionary is OSPD3 only, and played under North American
rules. (Well, other than for the cheating! You can be sure that most of
the better players you meet here are using anagram servers or other
Scrabble dictionary tools while they play, even if they deny it.) It
includes a tournament-style ranking feature for all players, adjusted
based on the result of every Scrabble game you play and the ranked
strength of your opponent. It annoyingly disconnects users when
overloaded, though this is a fact of life at most online multi-player
gaming sites. The random allocation of tiles is sometimes questionable.
For example, I once traded in the two "C"s which were in my rack, and
received back another two "C"s. Seeing there are
only two "C"s in Scrabble, this is theoretically impossible. OK - it is
not perfect. It is, however, still the best of the real time
multi-player Scrabble Java sites available for people who like to play
Scrabble online.
Games.Com (Link now removed)
(Important Update - In early 2006, Games.com ceased
to offer Scrabble online. This review of Games.com Scrabble is retained
purely for reference purposes.)
This is powered by identical
software to the Playsite game mentioned above. Read the Playsite review
and you will get most of the story. The main differences, though, are:
- Playsite's
free online Scrabble game
no longer exists. Games.Com still offers this free
Scrabble game online; &
- From
both personal experience and dozens of reports from other users, the
Games.Com version of the online Scrabble game
is terribly unstable. Disconnections, full rooms and no access, and
other such instabilities saw Playsite thrive on disgruntled Games.Com
users!
Given
the unreliability issues, it is hard to recommend the Games.Com free
online Scrabble game offering with much enthusiasm at
this time. Hopefully, they'll eventually upgrade to more reliable
hardware and bandwidth.
This
online Scrabble site appears to be identical to that which used to be
at Playsite and Games.com. Read the commentaries on those now defunct
Scrabble sites for an understanding of what to expect at Atari.com
A
Spanish Language Scrabble ® site only, though I am informed that an
English language version will soon be added. I cannot speak or read
Spanish, so my comments are based on what an enthusiastic player at
that site has informed me.
ReDeLetras
is the official site of the F.I.S.E. - Federación Internacional de
Scrabble® en Español. (Spanish Scrabble ® Federation.) The site has
5,000 registered users and plays tournaments online every month, with
live Judges online. The free online Scrabble game is said to include
more features than any other online Scrabble ® site in the world, and
uses 'The Royal Academy Of Spanish Language Dictionary'.
If
you want to play Scrabble online in Spanish, this sounds like the place
to be. If you want English language, keep checking back here. I'll
update this review if/when their English Language version of this free
online Scrabble game becomes available.
Literati at Yahoo! Games (Link not included)
Not
an online Scrabble game at all. In what
appears to be an attempt to design an online game similar to Scrabble,
yet without breaching any copyrights, trade marks or patents, Literati
is a game that has altered the rules, changed the bonus squares on the
board, uses a different dictionary source, and so forth, from the REAL
Scrabble game. In short, is just is NOT Scrabble at
all. It is a word game with some similarities to Scrabble.
Frankly,
I was not going to include it in this set of reviews of sites where you
can play Scrabble online free. In fact, I didn't at first. Eventually,
the volume of emails from Literati players begging for inclusion on
this page convinced me that I wasn't going to get any peace until I
gave it a mention.
I
repeat, though, that Literati (as fun a game as many obviously find it
to be) just is NOT Scrabble, does NOT
really deserve to be listed amongst these reviews of free online
Scrabble games, and therefore does NOT carry my
endorsement as a place to play a free online Scrabble
game.
Other comment about this category - If any reader knows of an
alternative free online Scrabble game
offering real-time, live player-to-player web-based games, please
let me know, along with any opinions about it you have from
your own experience. The community of enthusiasts who play
Scrabble online desperately needs a new "class act" in
this category.
Category
2: Real-time person-to-person Internet Relay Chat (or
similar) free Scrabble games.
There
are several offerings in this category. One stands indisputably above
all the others:
This
service is reputedly where many of the world's best international level
tournament competitors go to play Scrabble online.
A special software download is required (available free) to connect
with the server used for this game. To my knowledge, the Internet
Scrabble Club is the only place online where you not only have a choice
of dictionaries, you also have a choice of languages. You can choose to
play your opponents in any of the following:
- TWL98
(The North American Official reference, an enhanced version of OSPD3)
- SOWPODS
(The combined English & North American lexicon, now also the
official lexicon for the World Scrabble Championships.)
- ODS
(Official French Scrabble dictionary)
- LOC2000
(Romanian)
- SWL
(Official Dutch Scrabble word list)
- PARO
(Unofficial Italian dictionary)
- MULTI
(A combination of the above, to a maximum of nine letters)
Another
big attraction among the serious players is the built-in ratings
system. (Sure, Playsite & Games.com have ratings systems, too,
but they are merely toys in comparison.)
This
online Scrabble game offering
is not recommended for your novice and hobbyist players. It is a very
serious tool for competition at the highest level - and is the
indisputable king of that domain.
Still
a fairly popular alternative, particularly amongst North American NSA
members, though various reports suggest that it has been declining due
to competition from the Internet Scrabble Club, listed above.
None-the-less, it retains a core of die-hard fans who let their
feelings be known when I did not include it on this list of online
Scrabble game sites originally!
If
you like to play Scrabble online, and you
prefer North American version of the game, you'll want to be a bit
"geekier" than the average online Scrabble game
player. It requires an understanding of using Telnet, for example.
One
email I have received from a Scrabble playing MarlDoOM fan mentions
another shortcoming - a cumbersome competitor registration process.
NetwordZ (Links found below)
Another
IRC way to play Scrabble online. There
are a number of sites promoting and assisting this online
Scrabble game alternative. I am yet to personally test
NetwordZ, so I'll skip the review for now and just point you in the
right direction to discover it for yourself -
Category
3: Free Email Scrabble Games.
The
PixiePit (Best pick in this category)
IMPORTANT UPDATE -
ThePixiePit is no longer free. It offers newcomers one free game, but
expects you to pay an annual $US10 fee for unlimited use on your second
move in your second game.
Around
16,000 games are in progress here at any given time. That means there
are plenty of players frequenting this Scrabble Email
site! This site gives users a choice of dictionaries - OSPD2, OSPD3,
TWL, SOWPODS or All Dictionaries. The default, if players do not
mutually decide otherwise, is 'All Dictionaries'. Online
Scrabble at The Pixie Pit is a more leisurely game to
play than at Playsite. It is not played in real-time, but via email.
When it is your turn, the Pixie Pit system emails you to tell you, and
gives you a link to your online Scrabble game
board on the web. Thus, games are not at all fast. They may take
several days to play. On the other hand, it is easy to play multiple
games simultaneously this way, if you want to be kept busy. There is no
such thing as "cheating" at The Pixie Pit, as the game rules-of-play
make it abundantly clear that you are playing "open book" games. In
fact, when it is your move, your web game board even includes Scrabble
dictionary and anagram tools to assist your play. This site lacks a
player-ranking system, though is far more leisurely and friendly than
real-time sites, including private email chat messages between players
with each move.
A
lesser known Scrabble by email resource
than The Pixie Pit, the Bug Cafe may well one day surpass it as my
recommendation. It offers online Scrabble games
(oh, sorry - for legal reasons I should say "Scrabble like games") in
either OSPD3 or SOWPODS, and has a much cleaner, nicer looking
interface than the Pixie Pit. From my testing, it works perfectly well
in every necessary respect. One feature it offers which is lacking at
The Pixie Pit is a "Tournaments" facility. Groups of people may enter
tournaments, or even set up tournaments amongst their own group of
friends. Bug Cafe does the full tracking of winners in the knock-out,
moving the winners into the next round until only one player remains.
The only drawback is the user base. It is nowhere nearly as large as
The Pixie Pit. If one day it begins to rival The Pixie Pit for
popularity, Scrabble Bug may very well rise to my #1 rank for online
Scrabble games by email.
IMPORTANT
UPDATE - Bug Cafe has recently announced that it will no
longer be emailing each player of their online Scrabble
game after every move. They will send a daily email to
players of active games, though players may check online at any time
whether their opponent has made a move, and therefore if it is now
their turn yet. (This change reduces my enthusiasm for the Bug Cafe online
Scrabble game, and hopefully they will eventually
reverse this mistake. Meanwhile, it makes The Pixie Pit - reviewed
above - all the more the top choice to play Scrabble
online via email.)
E-Scrabble (Site has ceased to operate
due to legal demands from Hasbro.)
Sadly,
Hasbro's lawyers have issued a "cease and desist" notice against
e-scabble.com, citing copyright and cybersquatting breaches. You can read the cease & desist notice here,
if it hasn't been taken down by the time you check. It makes you wonder
if other online Scrabble games will also be targetted by the Hasbro
lawyers..
Sorry,
but I cannot review this online email scrabble game.
The extensive use of pop-up advertisements in javascript and flash is
overdone to the extent that I've never actually succeeded at gaining
entry. It keeps crashing my browser and freezing my machine, forcing me
to constantly reboot. Still, InterWebWord does seem to have a loyal
band of followers who obvious do not encounter the problems I have
encountered. According to Alexa Traffic Analysis figures, InterWebWord
appears to be the least used of the email Scrabble games listed here.
Is that because too many other people also encounter browser crashes? I
don't know. If you have used all of the various email
Scrabble games listed here, have had better luck
accessing InterWebWord and would like to share a comment about it,
please contact me.
Category
4: Real-Time "Player versus Computer Robot" free online
Scrabble games
Ian
Ford's Scribble Game (Best of this category - but
it is such a small category.)
This is a
remarkable effort from a personal, non-commercial site owned by a
computer programmer. You may need a free download Java extension for this
to work, though that is a quick and easy process. When done, you really
do have a challenging online Scrabble game
on your hands against this robot. This robot not only knows vocabulary,
it is also an impressive strategist. The programmer himself claims to
have never beaten his own creation. The Scrabble enthusiast who pointed
this site out to me says much the same - having "almost" beaten the
computer once. That said, it is definitely NOT
unbeatable. I beat it at my second game. When playing it, I noticed
that it disallows some SOWPODS words, yet accepts some words that are
not OSPD3. Curious, I contacted the author and asked whether he used
the TWL98 lists. He reply that he did not. It is based on ENABLE.
(Whatever is that?) It appears to be at least a fairly close
proximation of OSPD3, though. Watch for future developments. Ian Ford
tells me that he's planning on upgrading it to SOWPODS in the near
future. OK - that is its worst feature officially now on the 'to do
list'. The other bit of a let down is that its user interface is quite
ugly. But, how much does that really
matter?
In
summary, if you can't find a live person to play
Scrabble online with, this is a worthy substitute. It is
also ideal for people who are only interested in the game, and not the
'social interaction' that generally accompanies playing
Scrabble online.
Why
have I included this site on this list? Maybe for it's comic appeal.
Oh, that is such a cruel thing for me to say. Someone sure tried, but
didn't succeed with this programming effort. The robot only plays OSPD3
(rather odd for a site hosted on a UK domain), yet allows the player to
play SOWPODS. In fact, in my second game, I tested a suspicion - and
found that it lets the player play ANYTHING. Even silly, nonsensical
words. The robot never disallows what the player does. Golly gosh -
play a phony bonus word every move! (No, don't. Point is, though, that
you can.). The robot itself might have a good vocabulary (of OSPD3
words), but lacks playing skills. Every time it is the robot's turn, it
seeks for the single highest scoring word it can play. That is it's
only "strategy". It'll open up great triple and doubles positions all
over the board unthinkingly. It'll play the "S" for just 10 points, if
that's the highest scoring move it can find. It doesn't think to hold
on to the versatile letters and take a slightly lower score, in order
to balance it's own rack and strive for bonus words later. Seriously -
in my first game against this robot, I won by more than 200 points -
without playing phonies!
Don't
even think of coming to Hilda's for a decent online
Scrabble game. Try it for the humour value, if you wish,
though.
Reviews
by:
Trevor Johnson.
(Please look for me at these sites and challenge me to play
an online Scrabble game® with you one
day.)
|
