Discover These 8 Free Word Games For Your Smartphone

Hello. My name is L and I'm a word-game-aholic. It's true. Ever since I discovered Scrabble back in grammar school, I've been in love with games that involve spelling (not crosswords, which I detest, probably because I'm just not clever enough to figure them out). It's been my experience that most word games fall into one of four categories:

1. Scrabble – Find as many words as possible from the letters given to you. Then place them on the board, connecting to your opponent's, to maximize the points you'll earn.
   
2. Boggle – Discover as many words as possible, in within a time limit.
   
3. Word Search – Find the words hidden on lettered grid.
   
4. Hang Man – Guess the word by eliminating letters.
   

I'm not a huge fan of word searches, although it's proving to be a wonderful tool for my daughter as a way to reinforce her spelling. If you want to do this, here's a link to Super Kids where you can input your child's spelling words and create a word-search puzzle: http://www.superkids.com/aweb/tools/words/search.  I gravitate toward Scrabble and Boggle sorts of games with the goal of finding new and different games to fend off boredom and actually LEARN SOMETHING from my gaming experience. 


I've tried most of the free word games listed in Google's Play Store, depending on how many permissions they ask me to approve (for more on why that's critical, read this article I wrote for the website savvygeekmom.com: http://savvygeekmom.com/2013/12/is-installing-that-app-compromising-your-privacy. Here are my reviews of some of my favorites and former favorites:

1. 

   What a great game! 

   Word Weasel: This game falls under the Boggle category. Find as many words as possible from the 9 in the cube in 50 seconds. What adds a nice competitive element is that you see how you did versus everyone else playing and it shows you which words you didn't find. My only complaint is that some of the words are totally bogus or so obscure that no one in their right mind would know them. For example, they list the word “gwine” which, it turns out, is “the dialectal present participle of go.” Seriously?!  If you're going to list obscure words, as least tell me what they mean! But, overall, Word Weasel is a really enjoyable game and is my current favorite. Warning: Do not play this before bedtime because if you're as competitive as I, sadly, am, it will rile you up.
   
   
2. 7 Little Words: My husband told me about this game where you find the seven words based on clues. It's a nice, relaxing little challenge because there's no time limit and no penalty for incorrect guesses. Unfortunately, it crashed just before I reached the last level. I really, really hate that.
   
   
3. Pressed For Words: This is an anagram game where you try to spell as many three, four, five and six letter words with the six given. I like the fact that you can see what you've already spelled. Fun.
   
   
4. Words With Friends: Sure, playing this Scrabble-like game against your friends is oodles of fun, but like most Zynga games (Hanging With Friends was another favorite), it eventually crashed on my Samsung. Yes, I did report it and received no response from Zynga. No wonder they're laying people off. (Interestingly enough, according to usatoday.com, Zynga has been replaced as the number one maker of games played on Facebook by king.com whose apps also historically crash on my cellphone.)
   
   
5. Word Drop: This game is a curious, enjoyable take on Boggle. The letters keep falling from the top of the screen and you've got to find as many as possible before they build up. The graphics are wonderful and it's got a nice leaderboard.
   
   

6. 

   Lost Words - Gotta give this one another go.

   Lost Words: I had this on my phone and deleted it because it was too hard, but after reading the directions properly (my bad), it's back on. You've got to six tries to find all of the hidden letters of a given word. Correctly placed letters are shown in green, while misplaced letters are shown in orange. Maybe I'll take an aspirin before I play again. I love the fact that this app doesn't ask for a boatload of permisssions. You shouldn't have to grant a software company access to your contact list before you play a game.
   
   
7. Bonus Wordz: Another newbie to my Samsung, it's a Boggle-like game with really cool twist where you get bonus points for using color patterns. I just started playing so I haven't made any of the leaderboards (it would be really nice if you could see beyond the top 100 players), but I will!
   
   
8. Words By Post: My favorite alternative to Scrabble and Words With Friends, this -known game has all the charm of those other two games without the intrusive permissions required by the others. Love it and the developers are responsive when you have a problem.
   
   

   

   The BEST Scrabble clone ever!

And now my FAVORITE new website which I'm finding very helpful for helping me find new words: wordhippo.com (www.wordhippo.com). Man, what doesn't this site have?! You can look up word meanings, find opposites, discover rhyming words, see examples of words in sentences, find translations, see different tenses for words, hear their pronunciations, and more. The site is very clean looking and easy to navigate. It's a great reference tool that I find myself using every day.


Do you have any word games that you adore? PLEASE share them with me. I love playing new games and learning new words.


–


Thank you for reading! Please come back again soon. Hopefully, the groundhog will predict an early Spring on Sunday and I won't have to eat him...(kidding, kidding...) Have a great weekend!