What's the best Scrabble app?

November 23, 2017 6:51 AM

What’s the best Scrabble app for iPhones? Ideally ad-free, but minor ads would be okay.

My dad is a Scrabble fanatic. He asked me about getting a less ad-heavy Scrabble app than Words with Friends. He’d be just as happy playing against the “computer” as playing against any real people and doesn’t care about playing against his actual friends. He is not a Facebook user.

Bonus points if you can zoom in on the screen somehow or if there is a “big font” option.

(We’re happy to pay up to, oh, $20?)

posted by Charity Garfein to Technology (6 answers total)

Only mentioning this because you said "fanatic" The Scrabble people keep sort of a tight reign over the brand which means you have to use their official app ($8 and it's not great) or something like WWF which is Not Scrabble. If he has a desktop computer that he uses, he might really enjoy Wordbiz which is a real-time Scrabble client that connects to a server in Romania and you can play your friends or Internet randos. No mobile version however. The good news is it's flexible so easier to play with larger/more visible tiles. I play several hundred games a year with it.
posted by jessamyn at 7:01 AM on November 23, 2017 [4 favorites]

I use WordFeud on the iPhone all the time, and paid a one-time fee a long time ago which got rid of all the ads. I'm quite sure it was less than $20. You can zoom in on the phone, and the board scales up if you use it on an iPad.
posted by Herr Zebrurka at 8:36 AM on November 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: (Per Jessamyn, I'll amend this to "Scrabble-esque." He is a big Scrabble™ person but also enjoys any game in that vein.)
posted by Charity Garfein at 10:00 AM on November 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

Has he paid for the ad free version of words with Friends?
posted by Ftsqg at 10:31 AM on November 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

I will note that Words with Friends dictionary is both different than the Scrabble dictionary and has interesting updates that include a lot of abbreviations.
posted by sciencegeek at 10:59 AM on November 23, 2017

Here's a hot WWF tip: You can close the (non-video) ads pretty much immediately after they pop up, by tapping the corner where the "X" will eventually show up after the ad is over. If you look carefully while the ad is sliding up, you'll see the "X" for a split second before it disappears. This works on the iPhone version at least.

(This works for other games that use the same ad network -- Cross Install or whatever the hell it's called.)
posted by neckro23 at 4:12 PM on November 25, 2017