It's Only Words

Scrabble is a one word educational game which interests people belonging to diverse age groups all over the world. A source of both fun and information, the game has also inspired many clubs and competitions. With such high popularity, it was just a matter of time before Scrabble evolved from the traditional board and letters into its present electronic version. So, for those of you who would like to play Scrabble online for free, Scrabulous is the website to visit. Of course, there is quite a controversy surrounding Scrabulous; it is alleged that the developers of Scrabulous have copied almost everything from the original Scrabble. Nevertheless the website, and its equivalent Scrabulous application on Facebook (http://apps.facebook.com/scrabulous/) is an absolute treat.

For starters, there is absolutely no compulsion to sign up or get into the hassle of creating an account. You can simply log onto the website and start playing. However, creating an account has an advantage that you can save your games and hence, if you have to get up from your PC for any reason or your internet gets disconnected, you can pause and then resume your game. This feature is not available for guest users.

There are basically three options for anyone who wishes to play Scrabble here. You can either play with yourself — which of course is a tedious option, since the game can go on for ages. You can make your game challenging by playing with the artificially intelligent robot. Or you can join any of the Scrabble rooms and play with any other online user — and this is definitely the most interesting option.

Scrabble rooms are of three levels. These levels are categorised on the basis of difficulty. So there are rooms for beginners, intermediate and advanced. Depending on the level of your vocabulary and how skilled you are at the game, you can join any of the room and either join one of the Scrabble boards which are already active, or start a new game with any of the users in that room.

There are some very handy features on this website as well. For instance, if you cannot figure out which word to play where during one of your turns, you can use the hint feature to give you a prod in the right direction. Moreover, if you want to play a word and are not sure if it is in the Scrabble dictionary, then you can use the feature which lets you look up the word in whichever dictionary you are using. This feature does not tell you the meaning of the word, though. You can simply enter a word, and the search result will tell you if this word is valid.

All in all, this website can keep you glued to your computer for hours — whether you are at work or at home. It is also a great way to unwind when you are stressed out.

---

To play Scrabble online for free, log onto http://www.scrabulous.com