3 Free iOS Word Games

I’ve always been a big fan of word games, and I’ve always been a big fan of free stuff. It would figure, then, that I would want to talk about free word games in Free on iTunes.

First, I’d like to dispel any misconceptions many folks have about word games.

1. You must be a gingko snorting brainiac to be any good at word games.

WRONG! While a healthy vocabulary helps it won’t guarantee a super high score or a win every time. Strategy is the ticket. Knowing some key words (often these are two, three, and four letter words) to use when you’re in a bind will do more for your victory average, and ego, than any eleven letter word that describes animated high-spiritedness might.

In fact, big words are of little use if you play Scramble With Friends. What is of use is being able to spot common words in the jumble of dice and do so quickly enough to get a decent score.

Scramble with FriendsFind what you can in Scramble With Friends

The game is simple enough. Random dice are arranged on a 4x4 grid. You form words by touching letters that are next to each other. You can go in any direction as long as the next letter is adjacent to the current letter. You get 2 minutes to do your best and you can choose different power-ups to help you along the way at the beginning of the game.

The person with the best score after 3 rounds wins.

Scramble With Friends, like many free ‘With Friends’ games, is heavily ad supported, but free is free, and it is fun

2. If you win at Scrabble™ you will win at any other word game.

Inconceivable! While Scrabble™ and its clones can do a lot to enhance your word net worth, and can help you work out cunning strategies for spectacular wins, those skills will be of little use when playing anagram creating games, especially those that are timed. Often you just can’t see the simplest words though they may be staring you in the face.

If you don’t believe me go grab Scrabble™ Free and see.

ScrabbleClassic Scrabble that you can take with you

Here is a classic word game updated to be used on your iOS devices and includes Game Center integration, which allows play-n-wait games. You can take your time and decide how best to use your tiles to optimize your score. Game Center also lets you play multiple games against different opponents, if you like that sort of thing.

What’s cool here is that the game includes a dictionary so that you can see if a word in valid.

What’s not so cool are the ads that pop up after each play. It’s annoying, but typical for freebies. Scrabble™ Free is classic word game fun for free.

3. Word games are booooorrrriiinnnggg!

Au contraire, mon ami! It is true that many word games seldom elicit a response more exclamatory than a raised eyebrow. There are some, however, that are not only exciting, but are also hectic, sweat-inducing fun.

Take WordFu for instance. Here you get a bunch of letters and your goal is to make as many words, three letters or more, before the time runs out. That’s pretty hectic as it is, but throw in more time and other power-ups whenever you score well and soon sweat is induced while fun is had.

WordFu PlusThis is where the action begins in WordFu Plus

I love the music and sound effects in WordFu. The tunes are Asian-ish and the voice sounds like Bruce Lee amped on too much sugar and caffeine. Delightful!

WordFu has been around for a while and has a loyal following, but now there’s free WordFu Plus, where the Plus adds in social features such as head-to-head WiFi combat, challenges, awards and more. Sadly, it does not have Game Center integration, and I would like to see a pass-along challenge mode where your opponent gets the same dice you do, but can play a deferred game to challenge your score.

WordFu Plus is great for an ad-free freebie. If you want a word game that can get the blood pumping, WordFu Plus is it.

That’s going be a wrap for this week. More freebie word games below with direct links.