Postkiwi

I’ve been enjoying the revival of an interest in the game of Scrabble on Facebook, through the Scrabulous application. We have Scrabble at home here and enjoy the occasional boardless alternatives of ‘Take Two’, and 15 Speed Scrabble. (See Wikipedia for these and more). But it’s fun having a few games on the go at once, with family members and friends around the world.

[eminimall products="Scrabble"]

Scrabulous was launched in July 2006 by Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, two entrepreneurs from Kolkata, India. The application took off when it was integrated into Facebook. Only problem is that Hasbro and Mattel, who own the rights to Scrabble in the US and elsewhere respectively, are now suing Facebook and the Agarwallas, claiming, quite rightly, that they have no legal right to use the board game settings and name in an online setting. Apparently there’s an online version of the game in the wings. In the meantime 600,000 Scrabulous Facebook users are enjoying what could be a temporary pleasure. Many, myself included, have joined Facebook groups campaigning to find a win win deal in which Hasbro, Mattel and the Scrabulous brothers can work together.

Here’s my best game so far, played with Julie Furner, a youth worker in New South Wales. Six of the first eight moves between us were words using all our tiles - scoring an extra 50 points per word. Solving anagrams in cryptic crosswords, something I do most nights before I go to sleep, has come in handy in this game.

Here’s a list of tips for scoring well in Scrabulous (and Scrabble)

1. Always check to see if you are able to use all your letters. If need be, use an online anagram solver to train up in the skill.

2. Make the best use of triple and double word scores, if possible putting high scoring letters on the pink and red squares. Triple and double letter scores aren’t too bad either.

3. Look for common ways to form words. Using S, ED, ING and ER can give you useful leads.

4. Get to know your two letter words. There’s a useful list provided in Scrabulous. There is some controversy in this field however. The official Scrabble dictionary, for example, lists ZO (Himalayan cross between a yak and a cow) while the Scrabulous dictionary has ZA (slang for pizza).

5. Place words in ways that form several other words, ideally using double and triple word and letter squares twice. (This is where the two letter words are so important).