My Obsession

Everyone around me knows it… I'm pretty much addicted to Words With Friends. I'm good at spelling, I love my Ipad, and I'm fiercely competitive--this game was pretty much made specifically for me. In case you are unfamiliar, words with friends is basically scrabble played against opponents on your Iphone or Ipad. You can play multiple people at a time and people play their turn at their leisure. I try to keep around 20 games going at a time so that I will always have a turn to play when i feel like it. A lot of times I have to search for new opponents because it seems like people get tired of playing me. What can I say… losing sucks. I rarely get beat. It does happen on occasion but it doesn't happen often and if my memory serves me correctly, never twice in a row.

People often ask me how I got to be so dominant at this game (I'm kidding…nobody has really asked me such a thing, but play along anyway), and so I figured I would share a few of my tips and tricks on how I came to be so successful. I don't mind if the people I play read this -- I have that much confidence in my ability -- but a few of these tips might help to make your games more competitive and give me some more worthy opponents in the process.

Play Everyone: I don't care what your skill level is, I'll play you. If it's obvious I'm way better than you, I just use it as a game for speed and test my ability on coming up with a good word fast. I love to play people who challenge me because it makes me better and I also usually learn words I didn't know before.

Figure out a good offense/defense combo: I don't always play my best word because I'm constantly thinking ahead to what my opponent might play as well as what I want to do with my letters and what I'd like to keep/get rid of. I weigh my options and look at the big picture. Everyone is different, but make sure you're not just considering your one play.

Don't waste big tiles: The Q, J, X, and Z are your steak and lobster. Don't play them for some McDonalds sized points unless it's the end of the game and you just need to get rid of tiles. It's also very helpful to know all the kinds of words you can spell with these tiles. For example, how many words can you spell with a Q, without having a U?!!

Know when to swap: Sometimes you have a crap hand and you need to know when it's best to fold. If I have all vowels or all consonants or I simply can't play anything worthwhile, I either skip my turn or swap tiles. In the long run, it will be better because more often than not, you're going to have a few bad hands in a row if you don't do something about it.

The S is the most important 1 point tile: You shouldn't just throw it on the end of the word because you have it, if it isn't gaining you significant bonus points.

Look for Bingo opportunities: You get 30 extra points if you use all 7 of your tiles. I don't constantly look to do this, but the times I do take some extra time thinking about it is when I have an obvious help in the form of the following combos of letters that can be prefixes or suffixes and make it that much easier, like, ER(RE), ED(DE), ING, etc.

Know all your two letter word combinations: I pretty much know all of them by heart. Now, I'm not going to lie and say I know what they mean or how to use them in a sentence, but I do know they exist and can be your best friend in this game if you know where you can hook words on. There are only two letters that have no two letter words, C and V. You're welcome.

Read more: I know a lot of words because I like to read and I come across all different sorts of words all the time. However, even I sometimes admit to playing words I don't actually know are words. Most of the time though, I do know that combining certain letters a specific way has the better chance of actually being a word.

Don't cheat: It's so lame to cheat and it's also pretty obvious, unless you are a linguistics major or something. I can still beat a cheater from time to time because I think strategy still plays a part rather than always playing your best word at the time, but it takes a lot of the fun out of competition when someone uses a computer to generate a word for them.

If anyone else would like to add to my list, feel free. Sharing is caring.