Facebook Scrabble or Yahoo Literati?

As your interest in the Scrabble Word Game develops you will want to play Scrabble online, and as you search around the internet you will run across several official sites such as Facebook, Games.com, Lexulous.com, Pogo.com, and Literati on Yahoo Games.

Of the list I have played enough of Yahoo Literati and Facebook Scrabble to give an informed opinion which might in fact reflect on the other three sites as well.

Two official versions of Scrabble are available on Facebook; one for residents of the U.S. and Canada and the other for residents of other countries. A third online Scrabble-like game, Lexulous, is also available. (Lexulous was first branded Scrabulous but changed its name after lawsuits by Hasbro and Mattel.) I looked at Lexulous in order to write this hub and discovered that it starts with 8 tiles per player but I have not yet played a complete game in Lexulous.

I find that because Facebook is such a well organized social networking site the players tend to behave like real people with good manners. In Literati they are hiding behind avatars and anonymity.

This is not to say that the good people who play the wonderful world of Facebook Scrabble will not quickly forfeit you if you are leading in a close game and make the mistake of ignoring the timer. I think that is such a lowdown strategy. I can agree with a forfeit if the opponent goes over time by, say, 30 seconds. But the clock is winding down with two seconds to go, you begin to play and before you know it the person at the other end of the information superhighway of online games has stolen a victory courtesy of forfeit because you went two seconds over time!

The online dictionary in Yahoo Literati may be left in the automatic mode by not enabling the challenge option.  Once a player has created a word, it must be submitted by clicking the "submit" button. If the new words are valid then the he or she is awarded points. If one of the new words is invalid, then he or she must try again.

If the "challenge stage" option is enabled, the other players in the game can challenge the word. If no one challenges the word, the player that spelled the word is awarded the points. If a word is challenged, it is looked up in the online game dictionary. If the word is in the dictionary, it is considered valid and the player that initiated the challenge loses his or her next turn. If the word is not in the dictionary, the player must retract all the tiles he or she laid out and forfeit a turn.

This option is not in Facebook Scrabble worldwide version which is available to my territory.  I am unable to speak for the classic version available to North America but players from that region may submit comments.

Generally in Facebook Scrabble your game is not interrupted often by persons joining and leaving the room.  In Literati you have to private option in order to avoid the noise.

The downside of Facebook Scrabble is that if you have many friends in your network you will be interrupted in the middle of games by greetings from Facebook chat.  Unless you are a special type of genius it may not be convenient to engage in casual conversation in a timed game when your opponent is playing high scoring words while you are doing your best to survive.

Play Facebook scrabble live online or Yahoo Literati and have fun.