Skip to main content

Another quick gripe about Scramble With Friends

One reason why I prefer the word-game Boggle over Scrabble is the fact every player has the same letters to work with, so no player is at an advantage or disadvantage on that front. In Scrabble, while the better player will win more times than not, it's quite common for a player to be at either a significant advantage or disadvantage due to the letters he or she has to play with during the course of a game.

Well, I just found out the exception to this rule is with regard to the Challenge feature on the Zynga game Scramble With Friends (Boggle). About once a week, players can take part in a four-part challenge and whomever racks up the most points by the end of the challenge will be rewarded with some additional tokens in which to play more games.

For part one of this challenge, my grid looked like this:

U X D J
K R K C
F P R R
J O D O

Yeah, try forming 30 words with that grid - I dare you! Due to this grid, I was hardly able to muster any points and was shocked to see the almost overwhelmingly larger scores. I then retried the grid for whatever reason and noticed a few changes, meaning the grid was compiled of entirely different letters. In other words, not all of the players had the same grid to work with. This was disappointing, because it places certain players at an advantage and others at a disadvantage just based on the luck of the draw. How can a winner be determined in the game of Boggle if each player has different letters on their grids? If we're going to play games like that, why not have competitive bowlers face-off at separate bowling alleys? One can bowl at the alley where the league is played every week and the other can bowl inside their own mansion.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

My first book review of "Penetrating the Heart of Life: Ambiguous In Thought, Ambivalent In Feeling"

Well, I received my first book review on this poetry-compilation book I completed and published late last year, but have finally gotten around to marketing now. The reviewer gave it 5 out of 5 stars and said: "I enjoyed the poetic journey the writer has taken me on. From darkest days and hopeful optimism to the conclusion of hope realized. The visual images that the poem titled "Room Temperature" elicits, made me think of the song, "Horse With No Name" sung by the band America. In a similar manner, another poem – "Deafening Sigh-lence" reminded me a great deal of Simon & Garfunkel’s song, "The Sound of Silence". There are so many poems in this book that I related to, that I felt a connection to the author and felt that we were traveling on this journey together." http://www.lulu.com/shop/craig-rozniecki/penetrating-the-heart-of-life-ambiguous-in-thought-ambivalent-in-feeling/paperback/product-18677501.html

A closer look at the Scramble With Friends power-ups

I am unashamed to admit that I'm a nerd. My idea of a good time is playing a word game like Boggle or Scrabble. Thankfully, I (and many others) can play such games via Facebook and/or my (our) cell phone(s). While it seems that cheating has become more commonplace in these games (Words With Friends in particular) than San Diego has had nice weather, I've yet to give in to that craze. One element present with the game Scramble With Friends (Boggle) not present in Words With Friends (Scrabble) are legal boosts called "power-ups," which cost a number of tokens from the 15 available. I've now tried all five power-ups, including the latest one which costs money. So, in case anyone's curious about playing the game or giving these power-ups a gander, here's a rundown of them all: Freeze - I think this is probably my favorite of all the power-ups. With the freeze, time stands still for a matter of seconds, which allows you more time to find words and improve...

Boycotting jukeboxes because of TouchTunes

I love music and enjoy hitting the bar(s) over the weekend, so naturally, when the mood strikes me, I've never been coy about playing some songs on the jukebox. This past Thursday, a friend of mine turned 50, so several friends of her's, including myself, all met up to celebrate the occasion. At around 9:30, a friend of mine and I both chipped in $5 to play some songs on the jukebox. Four hours and 231 skips later, we gave up on hearing the songs we had selected, and went home knowing we had just wasted $5. This wasn't the first time such a thing had happened to me (and many others), and due to that, I'll be boycotting jukeboxes. Why? The scam known as TouchTunes. You see, here's how the plot typically breaks down. A person (or group of people) downloads the TouchTunes app on his/her phone, consumes one too many adult beverages, and due to this, has less care for spending extra money to hear the songs of their choosing right NOW. That's the thing with TouchTun...