Do You Play Word Games Like Scrabble?
This is 3amjosh’s submission for the HP Magic Giveaway. Feel free to leave comments for this article as you see fit - your feedback is certainly welcomed! If you’d like to submit your own how-to, what-is, or top-five list, you can send it to me. Views and opinions of this writer are not necessarily my own:
on geeks.pirillo and this is my entry for the HP Touchsmart Competition. It’s a How To on the “CheckWord” app for iPhone/iPod touch.
Do you play Scrabble with friends? Do you often find yourself arguing the validity of a word they are claiming is legit? Do you usually forget your handy dandy Webster’s Dictionary? If you’re like me, you have lost your pride many times when a word you believe is legit gets busted when your friends consult a dictionary to prove you wrong. Which takes away precious time for you to create megawords and rack up some points on scrabble. Well, the app store has brought us many applications but one of my favorites and most used is CheckWord.
Checkword pulls from two different lists of words. TWL is the 2006 tournament word list used in North America and other countries: Thailand and Israel. The list contains 178,691 words from AA to ZZZ. SOWPODS is the 2006 international word list used in English speaking countries that don’t use TWL. It contains 267,751 words. So for must of you, you will be using the TWL unless you want to trick your friends and get away with words that don’t really count. It does not contain proper nouns so your friends can’t get away with using Jeff or Canada.
With the features to tell you if words are good or not at the flick of a few thumb taps on your iPhone or iPod touch, this app is worth its weight in Gold. There is more to it than just a simple word search to prove your friends wrong.
Do you get stumped often with the letters on your stand and just have nowhere to go? Are you the type of person who enjoys cheating? Are you alright with deceiving your friends saying your checking words to see if they work? CheckWord has another great feature for you!
MakeWords will make you a Scrabble genius! Just click the little tab at the top of CheckWord that says MakeWord, and you will see a nice screen that lets you enter in random letters that you have to generate words from that list. Not only does it rank the words from amount of letters that can be used, it will even find words in patterns that are already laid out on the Scrabble board! Let me give you an example.
Your letters are ASETUI. Here are the results of the 61 words found:
- 3 Words with 5 letters: ETUIS, SAUTE, SUITE
- 19 Words with 4 letters: AITS, ATES, EAST, EATS, etc.
- 26 Words with 3 letters: AIS, AIT, ATE, EAT, etc.
- 13 Words with 2 letters: AE, AI, AS, AT, etc.
It even covers wildcards. If you have a wildcard, just substitute one of your seven letters with “.” and it will factor that in for some killer 5, 6, 7 or 8 word combos!
So, if you are into Scrabble this is a must have app! Take it to the next Scrabble party and either be honest and challenge your friends to play against the iPhone, or secretly sit and throw out some words that your friends will question the validity of and you can quickly show them with CheckWord that it is Legit! Have fun!
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15 Comments
Internet Nut
December 6th, 2008
at 9:32am
Chris Pirillo Are You Sending eCards Instead of Traditional Cards? What is the Gamer’s Bill of Rights? Do You Put Stickers and Skins on Your Hardware? Top 5 Bargain Video Games for ChristmasDo You Play Word Games Like Scrabble?
john
December 6th, 2008
at 10:01am
i thinks this information is very helpful. It is a pretty cool although rather sneaky program, and if i caught any one using it in a scrabble game with me i would probably be a little upset. This is altogether a pretty cool application.
Michael Murray
December 6th, 2008
at 10:12am
Whoa! This is some hot, juicy, Scrabble insight. You see, at our family gatherings we play highly competitive rounds of Clue and Scrabble. Being that I am blessed with the gift of verbosity this read will come in handy.
Now my pledge - after Christmas dinner - I now have the tools in the plam of my hand to CRUSH THEM ALLL!!!!!
MUAHHH HA HA HA HA ( Insert evil laugh here)
Cliff Carden
December 6th, 2008
at 11:20am
thanks for the info 3amJosh! Just had a “Scrabble argument” over Thanksgiving. Just think, you may have just helped save Christmas and the traditional Scrabble match.
Jessica Smith
December 6th, 2008
at 12:06pm
I think this program would be a fantastic asset from a business writing perspective. Travel plays a big role in my professional life. As I am writing emails, having an app to consult for a thesaurus feature would be great. Is a thesaurus included?
Rob Williams
December 6th, 2008
at 12:19pm
I like the idea, but i wouldn’t use it. I don’t like Scrabble (or have an iPhone). But if my wife had one, she’d be all over this.
3amJosh
December 6th, 2008
at 4:34pm
here to your comment on the blog so I can keep track. I’m in a contest for a HUGE package of computers in sort of a pay it forward type of fashion. If I am the winner I will be giving away one of the laptops to the 100th person to comment on my“How To Blog” on Chris Pirillos Site Here. That’s right, I know it’s a lot of people but seriously. I have nearly 500 followers on twitter nearly 100 subscribers on youtube and 300 or so friends on facebook. So I don’t think 100 comments is too much to ask for. The deal:
Joshua Johnson
December 6th, 2008
at 7:34pm
Can you believe I’ve never once played Scrabble in my life?? That looks like a cool app though. I may just download it for help when writing just to make sure I ‘m using a real word!
Ashleigh
December 6th, 2008
at 8:27pm
We play speed scrabble with my friends, and this is a huge help when we get down to the end and I need to rework the order of my letters quickly! It’s a great app! Thanks, 3amjosh for publishing this. :)
don
December 6th, 2008
at 9:03pm
i luv scrabble! unfortunately my friends are too dumb to play it - maybe this will help them! i luv iphone apps and am always looking for good ones, thanks 3amjosh!
3amjosh
December 6th, 2008
at 9:22pm
Jessica Smith, as far as I can see there is no thesarus on this app! Maybe that will come in a future update and they are likely to change that if they see this blog and want to fix that for us!
Justin
December 7th, 2008
at 12:47am
Wow, I don’t play much Scrabble…yet. I’ve been meaning to pick one up for the upcoming Holiday’s and can see Checkword becoming very useful. Really, it’s probably fun even without Scrabble because I could learn some new awesome words to use. My vocabulary now is so lame.
dan ohlerking
December 9th, 2008
at 12:48am
count me in. sure beats the big ol 500-pound unabridged dictionary we kept right next to the scrabble game when i was growing up.
Alicia
December 9th, 2008
at 3:40pm
Whoa…you little cheater. I’m not playing scrabble with you. Sounds cool but takes all the fun out of scrabble unless it is strictly used for checking the validity of the words. I would definitely use it for that aspect. I know many an argument has arisen from scrabble games gone bad.
Pkillur
December 10th, 2008
at 11:53am
That’s awesome! I swear that I’m living the simpsons episode when I play with certain family members - I almost halfway expect them to come up with squidybo…