Words With Friends is a multi-player word game

Word game

Word games and puzzles are spoken or board games often designed to test ability with language or to explore its properties.Word games are generally engaged as a source of entertainment, but have been found to serve an educational purpose as well...

 developed by Zynga With Friends (formerly Newtoy, Inc.). Players can take turns building words crossword

Crossword

A crossword is a word puzzle that normally takes the form of a square or rectangular grid of white and shaded squares. The goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases, by solving clues which lead to the answers. In languages that are written left-to-right, the answer...

 puzzle style with one or more friends, or by being matched with random opponents. Its rules and point system is based on that of the board game Scrabble

Scrabble

Scrabble is a word game in which two to four players score points by forming words from individual lettered tiles on a game board marked with a 15-by-15 grid. The words are formed across and down in crossword fashion and must appear in a standard dictionary. Official reference works provide a list...

. Up to 20 games can be played simultaneously using push notifications to alert players when it is their turn.

Released July 2009 and published by Zynga

Zynga

Zynga is a social network game developer located in San Francisco, United States. The company develops browser-based games that work both stand-alone and as application widgets on social networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace....

, Words With Friends is available for cross-platform

Cross-platform

In computing, cross-platform, or multi-platform, is an attribute conferred to computer software or computing methods and concepts that are implemented and inter-operate on multiple computer platforms...

 play on devices running the operating system

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

s Android and iOS (iPad

IPad

The iPad is a line of tablet computers designed, developed and marketed by Apple Inc., primarily as a platform for audio-visual media including books, periodicals, movies, music, games, and web content. The iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010 by Apple's then-CEO Steve Jobs. Its size and...

, iPhone

IPhone

The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...

, iPod Touch

IPod Touch

The iPod Touch is a portable media player, personal digital assistant, handheld game console, and Wi-Fi mobile device designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The iPod Touch adds the multi-touch graphical user interface to the iPod line...

). The game is also available on Facebook

Facebook

Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...

. In addition, there is a chat feature built in the game that allows you to chat with your opponent. The Words with Friends is one of the top ranking games in the iOS application store, available as both a free ad support and an ad-less paid version.

The game has garnered support among celebrities, including John Mayer

John Mayer

John Clayton Mayer is an American pop rock and blues rock musician, singer-songwriter, recording artist, and music producer. Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut and raised in Fairfield, Connecticut, he attended Berklee College of Music in Boston. He moved to Atlanta in 1997, where he refined his...

, Rainn Wilson

Rainn Wilson

Rainn Dietrich Wilson is an American actor and comedian. He is primarily known for his role as the egomaniacal Dwight Schrute on the American version of the television comedy The Office...

, Terrell Owens

Terrell Owens

Terrell Owens is an American football wide receiver who is currently a free agent. A six-time Pro Bowl selection, Owens has been one of the dominant receivers of his era...

, and Eliza Dushku

Eliza Dushku

Eliza Patricia Dushku is an American actress known for her television roles, including recurring appearances as Faith on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff series Angel. She starred in two Fox series, Tru Calling and Dollhouse...

.

Gameplay

The game has four important buttons at the bottom on the homescreen. These buttons include options to either pass, shuffle, swap or resign.
The Pass Button passes the player's turn; the player receives no points and becomes the opponent's turn to play a word. The Shuffle Button shuffles tiles on the tile line to show different letter placements to create different words. The Swap Button swaps letter tiles to get new ones; this skips the player's turn, but different letter tiles are available. The Resign Button forfeits the game for and automatically declares the opponent as winner.

The Pass and Shuffle buttons change into Play and Recall buttons when the player places a tile onto the board. The Play Button plays the word placed on the board, while the Recall Button brings back all tiles on the board to their original place on the tile line.

Scoring

The game uses 104 tiles with the following distribution:

• 2 blank tiles (scoring 0 points)
• 1 point: E ×13, A ×9, I ×8, O ×8, T ×7, R ×6, S ×5
• 2 points: D ×5, N ×5, L ×4, U ×4
• 3 points: H ×4, G ×3, Y ×2
• 4 points: B ×2, C ×2, F ×2, M ×2, P ×2, W ×2
• 5 points: V ×2, K ×1
• 8 points: X ×1
• 10 points: J ×1, Q ×1, Z ×1