![]() ![]() ![]() So how did BFF, FOMO, and TFW make the cut among the 50,000 new words? When the Social Dictionary was being created, there was no attempt to include all abbreviations. You now can play bae but not baes, bestie but not besties. Interestingly, though, the Words With Friends suggestion form warns that they’re unable to add words from the traditional no-go categories: proper nouns, words with hyphens or apostrophes … and abbreviations. Every day, Zynga fields more than 5,000 suggestions for new words to make playable, and many of these have gone into the dictionary expansion. While Words With Friends has enough differences from Scrabble, such as the distribution of letters and point values, to keep them from being sued by Hasbro and Mattel, the “no abbreviation” rule has been one point of agreement shared by the two games-until now.Īccording to Gurpreet Singh, the product director of Words With Friends, the new Social Dictionary is one way that the game is responding to player feedback. The 174,000 words on the ENABLE list have served Words With Friends well over its eight-year history, ever since its first development by Newtoy (which was bought out by Zynga in 2010). and Canada, and Mattel elsewhere), became a popular word list for game-makers developing their own Scrabble spinoffs, including, in 2009, a little game called Words With Friends. ENABLE, free from the proprietary burdens imposed by Scrabble’s trademark holders (Hasbro in the U.S. And when an open-source alternative to the Scrabble dictionary called ENABLE (an acronym for Enhanced North American Benchmark Lexicon) was released in 1997, it too considered abbreviations verboten. The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, first published in 1978, has followed those instructions to the letter. As Stefan Fatsis, the author of the book Word Freak about the competitive Scrabble world, has noted, when the game was first marketed in 1948, the rules were spelled out right inside the box: “Any words found in a standard dictionary are permitted except those capitalized, those designated as foreign words, abbreviations, and words requiring apostrophes or hyphens.” Doesn’t including these abbreviations go against the spirit of games like Words With Friends that have Scrabble burned into their DNA? (And no, Zynga isn’t making DNA playable, at least not yet.)Īs the granddaddy of word-tile board games, Scrabble has long made clear what does and doesn’t count as a playable word. In addition, to prevent games from stalling out, you're automatically resigned from a match if a random opponent doesn't make a move within five days - another plus that should help ensure that gamers remain interested in playing Words With Friends 2 over and over again.While trendy initialisms might make for good marketing material, purists raised on Scrabble might balk at the additions. Little touches like that, and the ability to shuffle the order your lettered tiles appear in at the bottom of the screen to help jog word ideas, really enhance the playing experience. Many of the matches offer a chance to customize difficulty level and speed players can also test out a word and, if they decide it isn't ideal, take all the letters back and try again. They can instantly get a definition of a word they don't know by tapping on it, and can also confirm they're spelling words correctly with an in-game tool. Players will need to come up with (and possibly readjust) a strategy to effectively place the letters they're given on the colored tiles on the board that offer extra points. Aside from that, though, the game is well-designed, with a consistently good pace, and it provides some pretty appealing ways for players to strengthen their vocabulary, spelling, and logic skills. There's also no way to turn off the full-screen ads that pop up fairly frequently as you play, unless you've purchased a previous version of Words With Friends. The chatting ability raises some concern: You can block users but can't disable the chat feature. This includes lightning round challenges, where you're teamed up with a random group of players matches where you can choose to face off against bots and games that pair you with a player who has equivalent skills. This word game offers a fun, fast-moving playing experience with a variety of options to keep you engaged from round to round. ![]()
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