| Wordscraper | |
|---|---|
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| Release | 2008 |
Wordscraper is a Scrabble-style word game formerly available as a Facebook application. It was created by the Agarwalla brothers Rajat and Jayant, creators of Scrabulous, and differs from Scrabble by having no fixed board design or tile distribution, instead prompting the user to choose their own.
Wordscraper was reportedly released in response to a DMCA action against Scrabulous by Hasbro. [1] It has been online since January 2008. [2]
Wordscraper allows users to create a customised board and tile set of their choice. Users choose where premium squares are placed on the board. Premium squares range from 2x to 5x letter score and 2x to 5x word score. Users can also choose the tile distribution including quantity of each letter and score for each letter. Users are free to share the rules they have created with other players.
It is not possible to recreate the copyrighted Scrabble board layout using this process, or any rough approximation of the board - attempting to do so or to use a saved Scrabble-type layout results in a "Sorry, this board is not allowed" message or in the game being automatically changed to Wordscraper Standard.[ citation needed ] These restrictions were imposed as part of a legal settlement of a case brought by Hasbro concerning copyright of the Scrabble game. [3]
Scrabble is a word game in which two to four players score points by placing tiles, each bearing a single letter, onto a game board divided into a 15×15 grid of squares. The tiles must form words that, in crossword fashion, read left to right in rows or downward in columns and are included in a standard dictionary or lexicon.
Upwords is a board game. It was originally manufactured and marketed by the Milton Bradley Company, now a division of Hasbro. It has been marketed under its own name and also as Scrabble Upwords in the United States and Canada, and Topwords, Crucimaster, Betutorony, Palabras Arriba and Stapelwoord in other countries. It is currently available as a board game and a digital gaming app.
Anagrams is a tile-based word game that involves rearranging letter tiles to form words.
Boggle is a word game in which players try to find as many words as they can from a grid of lettered dice, within a set time limit. It was invented by Allan Turoff and originally distributed by Parker Brothers. The game is played using a plastic grid of lettered dice, in which players look for words in sequences of adjacent letters.
Alfred Mosher Butts was an American architect, famous for inventing the board game Scrabble in 1938.
Editions of the word board game Scrabble in different languages have differing letter distributions of the tiles, because the frequency of each letter of the alphabet is different for every language. As a general rule, the rarer the letter, the more points it is worth.
Super Scrabble is a board game introduced in 2004 and a variant of Scrabble. It is played on a 21×21 grid board instead of Scrabble's usual 15×15, and uses twice as many letter tiles.
Scrabble variants are games created by changing the normal Scrabble rules or equipment.
In the game of Scrabble, a challenge is the act of one player questioning the validity of one or more words formed by another player on the most recent turn. In double challenge, if one or more of the challenged words is not in the agreed-upon dictionary or word source, the challenged player loses her/his turn. If all challenged words are acceptable, the challenger loses his/her turn.
Bingo is a term used in North American Scrabble for a play in which a player puts seven tiles on the board in a single turn. Mattel, the game's manufacturer outside North America, uses the term bonus to describe such a word. In French, it is called a scrabble. A player who does this receives 50-point bonus. The calculation of the bonus varies between the Hasbro and Mattel versions of the game, with the bonus applied before double- and triple-word scores multipliers in the Hasbro rules and after in the Mattel rules.
mi×ma+h is a Canadian board game developed by Wrebbit and published in 1987. It resembles a variant of Scrabble in that tiles are placed on a crossword-style grid, with special premiums such as squares that double or triple the value of a tile and a 50-point bonus for playing all seven tiles on the player's rack in one turn. Unlike Scrabble, Mixmath uses numbered tiles to generate short equations using simple arithmetic. Wrebbit, maker of Puzz-3D jigsaw puzzles, has since been taken over by Hasbro, and it appears that Mixmath has been discontinued.
Tile tracking is a technique most commonly associated with the game of Scrabble and similar word games. It refers to the practice of keeping track of letters played on the game board, typically by crossing letters off a score sheet or tracking grid as the tiles are played. Tracking tiles can be an important aid to strategy, especially during the endgame when there are no tiles left to draw, where careful tracking allows each player to deduce the remaining unseen letters on the opponent's final rack. The marking off of each letter from a pre-printed tracking grid as the tiles are played is a standard feature of tournament play.
Lexulous is an online word game based on the commercial board game Scrabble. It is run by an Indian company of the same name on a dedicated website, and is also available within the social networking site Facebook.
Scrabble ME is a variation of the classic board game Scrabble, where each player plays on their own small board as it is opposed to all players playing on one main shared board. It was published by Winning Moves Games USA in 2008.
The Computer Edition of Scrabble is a computer game developed by Leisure Genius for the Macintosh in 1988, and was an official computerized version of the board game Scrabble.
Scrabble Trickster is a word game created by Mattel and announced on 6 April 2010, designed as a spin-off to one of the company's products, Scrabble. Mattel intends to sell the product in Europe starting in July 2010, but not in North America, because the company owns the rights to Scrabble and its derivatives worldwide except for in North America, where rival company Hasbro holds control of the game.
Words with Friends is a multiplayer computer word game developed by Newtoy. Players take turns building words crossword-puzzle style in a manner similar to the classic board game Scrabble. The rules of the two games are similar, but Words with Friends is not associated with the Scrabble brand. Up to 40 games can be played simultaneously using push notifications to alert players when it is their turn. Players may look up friends either by username or through Facebook, or be randomly assigned an opponent through "Smart Match". Players can also find potential opponents using Community Match.
Scrabble Showdown is an American game show created for the American cable network The Hub. The program was based on the board game Scrabble and was hosted by Justin Willman. It ran from September 3, 2011, to April 15, 2012.
Fightin' Words is a multi-player, multi-platform word game developed by InterWorks, Inc. The game was designed as a mobile software application for mobile phone users. In the game, players compete against each other by creating words on a Scrabble style game board. The game was first developed for BlackBerry, as the BlackBerry App World lacked Words With Friends style games. The game is now available for BlackBerry and Android systems, allowing for cross-platform gameplay.
Ruzzle is a mobile game developed by Swedish gaming company MAG Interactive and was first published in the Apple Store in March 2012. Ruzzle is inspired by the classic board games Boggle and Scrabble. The game is highly social and based on online matches, requiring the player to find an opponent who can be appointed randomly by the system from online users, chosen from a list of friends set by the player, or selected from amongst their Facebook friends. Ruzzle is now available for iOS, Android, and Windows Phones.