I have long enjoyed playing Scrabble, so when my friend Ulysses suggested I try the online game Words With Friends, I gave it a try.
Logging into Facebook, I opened the game and connected with Ulysses to play. Though Words With Friends is not identical to Scrabble, it's pretty close and pretty fun.
After a few months, I found a new WWF partner: Carolyn, a friend of my wife's. We played about three times before Carolyn suggested that we try Words With Friends 2.
I didn't even realize there was more than one way to play Words With Friends, but I was willing to give it a try. I downloaded the app, then started games with Carolyn and, soon after, two strangers.
And ... I hated it. Let me count the problems with WWF2.
1. The app interrupts periodically to tell you've earned 25 gold coins or some such. "You've met your daily goal" is one message, accompanied by more gold coins. Huh? Who cares? I just want to play.
2. After every play, an ad appears and you often can't close it for at least 30 seconds. These are usually particularly annoying ads with cartoon characters running back and forth on the screen.
3. WWF2 allows players to swap tiles without losing a turn. This is an extraordinary departure from the rules of both Scrabble and the Facebook-based Words With Friends. The ethos of the game has always been that you play the tiles you get. If you're totally stuck, you can swap some of your tiles, but you lose your turn in the process. This new feature — called "Swap+" — completely undermines that.
I tried "Swap+" a couple times in WWF2, but it felt like cheating. And then I realized it was even worse than that. While the game allowed me to use Swap+ it a couple times for free, it soon became clear that if you wanted to use it regularly you would have to pay for each use. In other words, players with money can buy a competitive advantage. Yuck.
4. WWF2 also has a feature called "Word Radar" that shows you on the board where you can play. Again, this feels like cheating. The challenge of the game is to find the best place to play on your own. And while I only tried Word Radar once, I see that continued use will — sure enough — cost cash. Yuck II.
5. The board in WWF2 is 15 by 15, a total of 225 squares, almost twice that of the 11x11 (121 squares) board in Words With Friends. At first I thought this was exciting because it seemed to open the potential for a lot more play. But now, frankly, the games just go on too long. Words With Friends is a nice compact competition. WWF2, by comparison, seems like a marathon trudge.
6. In Words With Friends, when you play a tile that creates two invalid words (one vertical and one horizontal), it tells that both are wrong. That's helpful and you can move on to find correct words. WWF2, however, will only tell you one of the two words is wrong; only through more trial will you discover the other word is invalid too. This is a step backward.
7. In Words With Friends, if you want to move a tile back to your rack you just click on it. WWF2 requires you to drag it back. Again, this is a downgrade.
8. You can play Words With Friends on your phone or on a computer. But WWF2 can only be played on a phone.
This is the last you'll hear me complaining about WWF2. Once I finished my three games — I won two and lost one — I deleted the app.
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