Scrabble (DS) -- What Do You Mean 'OMGWTFBBQ' Isn't A Word?

Before video games came along, card and board games were king.  Simple games like Monopoly and Poker were invented and families had hours of fun playing them.  Fast forward to today, and it's like you can't be bothered to bring out your chess set or your go board or even a simple deck of cards.  Maybe you live alone, or no one else likes to play against you anymore because you always win (or you always lose and you complain bitterly because of it).  So it seems the logical step to digitize these popular board and card games so that you can play against the computer or against someone over the Internet.  Of course, this means you have to buy a game you probably already own, but it's worth it.  Or is it?

There have been versions of Scrabble released before, including multiple versions and variations for the PC, the most recent of which, Scrabble Journey, features varied boards with differing requirements on each of them.  There's even been a game show that ran on NBC, hosted by Chuck Woolery (who later went on to host another word game, Lingo on GSN). Scrabble as a game has proven so popular that other companies and websites have come up with their own versions, the most notable of which is called Literati, and is featured on Yahoo Games.

Both SCRABBLE and LITERATI are in the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, 4th Edition, and are worth 14 points and 8 points respectively.*

So why buy the DS version?  Well, portability for one.  For another, the touch screen is as close as you can get to using a mouse, unless you play the PC or Mac versions, and helps immensely during games when there's a time limit involved.  And for a third thing, Training Mode will help you grow as a player without having to write out all the good words on flash cards to memorize them.  Soon, you'll be using two and three letter words like a pro.

And yet, famous professional Scrabble players like Joel Wapnick have their own methods to memorize words and they've won official tournaments at the world level.  So the question becomes, what use is the software, when there are plenty of other methods to become good at the game?  Why should you buy the DS version if you'll benefit more by developing your own method of becoming a good tournament player?

The answer is: if you're training to be a tournament player, you have better options than this software.  Other than Training Mode, all this software really offers is the game itself.  Software like Scrabble Journey is good because it offers something different from the ordinary Scrabble game, and Scrabble Rack Attack takes the tiles from the original game, and uses them in a completely different way.  Scrabble on the DS, however, only offers the touch screen as an advantage over other console versions.

DS, by the way, is not in the OSPD4.


As for how the software itself runs, it's alright, but it probably could've been better.  At least there's no bugs.  Young gamers like me will have no trouble seeing the board on the tiny touch screen, but older gamers and gamers with sight impairments would have to use the magnification feature.  Unfortunately, only a portion of the magnified board can be shown on the screen; this hinders the development of a player's strategy.

Difficulty levels are very borked.  While there are supposedly six difficulty levels in the game, affecting the vocabulary of the AI, difficulty can be skewed depending on tile distribution, as it would in a normal Scrabble game.  The problem is that the AI will choose to either play all the tiles at once, or if it can't, it'll play the best scoring small word.  Intelligent strategies seem to be lost on it.  I played a level 4 AI one time and was smoked as the AI played bingo after bingo and accumulated over 400 points to my paltry 200.  Then I played the exact same AI in the next game without adjusting the difficulty level and smoked it, scoring over 450 to its paltry 150.  Instead of managing bonuses, holding certain tiles back to save for later and trading problem tiles like most human players would, the AI was just playing for points.  I should at least be thankful that the AI will only play real words, and won't try to sneak something by me like OMG RACECAR BLING BLING!

OMG, RACECAR and BLING aren't in the OSPD4.

The DS cartridge also includes Scrabble Slam, the card game based on Scrabble where the object is to place cards upon a four letter word, one at a time, to change it into other words (for instance, RACE becomes RACK, then LACK, LUCK, BUCK, etc.).  As before, there are six difficulty levels you can program into the software's AI, but in the case of Slam, if you're quick enough, you can run circles around the AI, and win each and every game, no matter what, because even at the most difficult level, level 6, the AI plays slowly, like a blindfolded, handcuffed, arthritic old man.  With rickets.  And Parkinson's Disease.  And who has lost all his fingers due to frostbite and/or gangrene.

RICKETS is in the OSPD4, worth 13 points; GANGRENE is in the OSPD4, worth 10 points; FROSTBITE is too long for the OSPD4, would be a legal play anyway, and is worth 14 points.

Chances are, though, that if you have friends who also enjoy Scrabble, one or more of you will already have a physical copy of the game, and would be more than willing to set it up and have a game or two with you.  It's also a lot more fun to play in real life, because if you're playing the AI, or playing someone on the Internet, you wouldn't get to participate in any fun arguments over vocabulary.  At a recent Scrabble Night I attended, I argued that NE is a word because it's the masculine form of NEÉ, while the other person argued back that you wouldn't use NE because it's the woman who changes her name when she's married and so you wouldn't have a use for the masculine form, therefore it's not a word.  Later on, another player proposed MILF as a word (it's an acronym, and therefore not a legal play).  Unfortunately, this sort of fun is missing from an electronic version.

FUN, of course, being worth 6 points.


This software, unfortunately, is largely useless to anyone but the most casual of players who don't already own either the physical game, or another version of the software for a different system.  There are probably enough versions of Scrabble out there that we don't need any more copies of the game floating around in bargain bins across the continent.  EA probably makes enough money from their sports titles that they don't have to scrabble for more money by porting board games to every single device with the capability of executing game software.  And it's not like they have a monopoly on board games either.  Other companies are at fault too, and I wish they would get a clue: we don't need a million versions of a game we already own.


*It will be assumed for the purposes of scoring that blanks aren't used to make the words; all scores listed do not include bonuses, for it is unlikely but possible within the rules of the game to play eight and nine letter words without landing on a single bonus square.