The Dictionary in Facebook Scrabble Worldwide Online Board Game

Word game cheats abound on the internet. I do not know all the tools thy use but I understand that anagram software creates words from letters. What is the difference between cheating with anagram software and using the dictionary in Facebook Scrabble Worldwide? With the cheat software the machine is creating words for the player. But with the dictionary, you create the words, and proceed to check for two things: Firstly, you check to find out if the word is valid. If it is you get a green lettered ‘VALID’. Secondly, you are checking to build your vocabulary, or to confirm it, by looking at the meaning. The online in game dictionary will give you the short meaning as well.

Yea, I must confess that it is quite a paradigm shift for me to play a scrabble game with a dictionary available to check the word before placing it on the board. In this online PC game the dictionary does not reveal the word, you have to create the word and ask the dictionary if it is valid. Technically then it is really a word checker and not a dictionary, for to say you have a dictionary to check would mean that you are looking at pages and pages of words. And that would be cheating.

But hold on. Remember the good old days of offline scrabble board game with only two persons in the room. One of the players would volunteer to score. Whenever there was a challenge the same player/scorer would have to check the dictionary.

Remember how you would with a very honest heart try to look at the challenged word only but your eyes would still see other words.  And deep in your heart you would say it ought not to be this way.  But it was an inescapable part of offline scrabble between two players, with no neutral third person in the room.

So now in the case of Facebook Scrabble Worldwide you get to check only the word you input into the dictionary.   On the positive side this is a way to help you to build your vocabulary without punishing you for the lesson; on the negative side a weak player may become over dependent on the dictionary, even become an expert at using the dictionary to beat a better scrabble online board game player.