Words With ScrabbleScrabble, Words With Friends, Lexulous

Review by True Grinder for SCRABBLE Wordbook
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This book is a terrific value. It can be used in place of the Scrabble dictionary during games, and it’s easier to find the words because there are no definitions, and the words are listed in alphabetical order AND alphagram order. It also gives you ideas as to what order to learn the word lists in. I would recommend, though, that as soon as you receive this book you get it spiral-bound with a coil binding at OfficeMax (cost: $4.50). I found that the binding cracked and the pages started falling out after only two weeks. But with the new binding I can lay the book flat and study it while I’m eating, and the pages don’t go anywhere.

Review by Brian Galebach for SCRABBLE Wordbook
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The original holy grail for hardcore Scrabble players has been updated to match the latest North American Scrabble dictionary. Whether you’re a solid living-room player looking to enter the world of Scrabble clubs, or already a hardcore Scrabble junkie looking for the ultimate edge, this book has what you need to succeed.

This not only contains every acceptable word of eight and fewer letters, in two lists (one alphabetical, the other in “alphagram”, e.g. aaaghlmpr, order), but also key starter lists and tools to help you learn the most important words as efficiently as possible. Highly recommended!

Review by Emily James for SCRABBLE Wordbook
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This book is very well organized and easy to follow. The lists are in order of importance/usefulness and the introductions to each section are informative and entertaining. The only thing it’s missing is a list of front and back hooks for the three letter words.

I’ve been studying it vigorously for a month or so and have seen a great improvement in my game.

A must for all Scrabble lovers, especially those aspiring to tournament play!

Review by iamdavinci for SCRABBLE Wordbook
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I guess this could be beneficial if you want to study it. But all it is is a list of words so the cons and pros are:

CONS:

Just a list of words of varying length

Very fine print – you’ll need your glasses or magnifying glass depending on your sight variance and if you have a problem with reading small print.

Some words are in non-alphabetic lists

PROS:

Just a list of words of varying length

Good 2 and 3 and 4 and 5 letter lists to study

Some strategic word lists (such as the High Fives – words that cannot have an “s” ending and Vowel Heavy words)

Mnemonics – if you have the gumption to study these words it offers mnemonic exercises

This book is for the Scrabble player and I mean not for the casual once a year Scrabble player but one who likes to play in a competitive or a non-competitive format but more frequently than once a week/month/year. For me it is a book that I will use to beat my brother in law; the self gloating Scrabble champ (at least he thinks he is in his own delusional part of this world).

I bought it as a package with The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (definitely good book to have) and the Super Scrabble Deluxe Edition because I wanted more tiles to play with and what is good about this game is you score more. YIKES!

Hope this helps anyone who has an interest in the wonderful world of Scrabble and the words that mankind has made up.

Review by Kimba W. Lion for Scrabble Flash
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Ah, the joys of cheap computing power. This game consists of 5 oversized “tiles”, each with an LCD screen on the top to show one letter. The tiles communicate with each other via a tiny optical emitter/sensor on each side–that’s why the instructions emphasize that the tiles must be lined up and touching to work.

Rather than being a crossword game like the original Scrabble, this consists of a few variations on unscramble-the-word, more like Jumble. There’s nothing wrong with that, but the vocabulary goes a bit beyond ordinary day-to-day usage. In just a few minutes’ time, I was supposed to come up with words like “sager”, “Lanai”, and “laves”. OK, you can argue about whether those words belong in the game or not. But how about “sewar”? That was the answer to one 5-letter jumble, and it is not a word in any dictionary I consulted. It’s one thing to use unusual words, but non-words just make the game ridiculous.

The game seems durable enough. There is a hard plastic window over the LCD screens, so they are well protected. The optical ports on each side are tiny and recessed, so it’s possible they could get clogged with some foreign substance, but I expect a quick cleaning with a q-tip could fix that.

Knowing that game play may be stumped with a non-word really lowers the play value for me. I think I’m being generous with a 3-star rating.

Review by Travis Ann Sherman for Scrabble Flash
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This Scrabble game comes with five cubes which, when lined up together and turned on, offer three different games. All you have to do is press play and five letters come up. It’s up to you to make words out of them. The blocks bleep pleasantly at you when your word is good bleep-bleep-bleep again towards the end of the session. Afterwards, the blocks give you a score of how many words you made and a maximum score of how many words you could have made. My only regret: that the blocks don’t reveal what those words were. Then this would have truly been an educational game. I guess I’ll have to google up a list of those and commit them to memory because I really do want to beat this game. The seconds fly by, the cubes flash and bleep — it really lives up to the game name. I was Scrabbling!

Review by K. Carroll for Scrabble Flash
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Scrabble Flash is a fun, good game that has the potential to be great with a few tweaks. I’m hoping that they come up with a version 2 at some point.

There are 3 games you can play with the tiles.

Game 1 is the definite favorite in my family. This game lets you use the 5 tiles to spell as many 3, 4, or 5 letter words as you can in the time allotted. When your time is up, you get a score based on the number of words formed (no extra points for long or difficult words), then tiles show the maximum number of words possible.

Game 2 is another solo player game that requires you to use all of the tiles (you can play with 4 or 5 tiles) to form words.

Game 3 is a multi-player game similar to game 2. Players take turns using all of the tiles to make a word, then they pass the tiles and the next player tries with new letters. If you can’t make a word in time, then you are out.

I wish they had a 2 player version of game 1 that allowed each player to take a turn using the same letters to see how close they can get to the maximum number of words possible. We do play game 1 against each other, figuring percentages of words made/maximum words possible, but since the letters each person uses are different, it isn’t really a level playing field. It would also be nice if there was a way to see some of the words that you missed getting in the maximum words list.

Review by J. M WILINSKY for Scrabble Flash
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Since this is a Scrabble product, I expected it to be good and I was not disappointed. The five tiles already have long lasting lithium batteries installed and are easy to turn on. It has three different five tile(letter) games, and three four tile games. You simple leave out a tile for a four tile game; no other step is required. To form a word, you place the tiles in a line, touching(or almost touching) each other and after forming a word, the tiles will tell you if it is correct. The tiles will also alert you that your time is ending and when it is over and it will display your score and tell you what a perfect score would have been. It is really user friendly. Since kids these days seem to take well to tech toys, it should be suitable for around 8 year olds and up. My favorite aspect of this game is actually its size! It comes with a small, well made plastic case that holds the tiles stacked up and room for the instructions(don’t lose them!), so it is easy to store and take out and play. Have fun!

Review by EuReka for Scrabble Flash
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This is truly amazing, Scrabble is a great past time for many and most kids these day would simply shun it as knowing they have to work their brain to play but I think this is just what everyone wanted!

Fast, Fun, Good old family nights. This isnt played like your typical version of scrabble in the fact that there are different variations of the game more like an unscramble/find the hidden word/s.

There is even a 1 player mode which is great for alot of people that need a little challenging bit to pass the time.

They put some work into making this different that what the scrabble name entails and I love it!

The blocks are cell battery powered and seem very sturdy so if they happen to get thrown around a bit I see no problems in harming the devices.

One of the only drawbacks is that some of the words it asks you to come up with are weird and or never heard before so that might make smaller ones loose interest as there isnt a way to set the word difficulty or anything like that, but if that was included it would be 115% perfect!

All in all a great game that is going to get alot of use out of me! 🙂