Wordscraper is a 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...

-style word game available as a Facebook application. It was created by the Agarwalla brothers Rajat and Jayant, creators of Scrabulous

Scrabulous

Lexulous is an online word game based on the commercial board game Scrabble. It is run by an Indian company of the same name on a dedicated website, and is also available within the social networking site Facebook....

, and differs from Scrabble by having no fixed board design or tile distribution, instead prompting the user to choose their own.

Although reported as being released in response a DMCA action against Scrabulous by Hasbro

Hasbro

Hasbro is a multinational toy and boardgame company from the United States of America. It is one of the largest toy makers in the world. The corporate headquarters is located in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, United States...

, the game has been online since January 2008.

Game customisation

Wordscraper allows users to create a customised board and tile set of their choice. Users choose where premium squares are placed on the board. Premium squares range from 2x to 5x letter score and 2x to 5x word score. Users can also choose the tile distribution including quantity of each letter and score for each letter. Users are free to share the rules they have created with other players.

It is not possible to recreate the copyrighted Scrabble board layout using this process, or any rough approximation of the board - attempting to do so or to use a saved Scrabble-type layout results in a "Sorry, this board is not allowed" message or in the game being automatically changed to Wordscraper Standard. These restrictions were imposed as part of a legal settlement of a case brought by Hasbro concerning copyright of the Scrabble game.

Differences from Scrabulous

In addition to the ability to create customised games, Wordscraper differs from Scrabulous in a number of ways including:

• Circular tiles and 'squares' are available as an option: until December 2008 the square version was not available
• Premium 'squares' have been recoloured.
• The distribution of tiles can be modified.
• Tiles have no scores marked on them.
• The tile distribution can be viewed within the game.
• Default tile distribution and scores are different (though some values are the same)
• Wordscraper, as of December 2008, now has 8 tiles instead of the previous 7
• As of 11/ 12 December 2008 boards even approximately resembling Scrabble are disallowed.

Spam-like behavior

Friends of people who play this game may receive notification that that person is playing the game, making users of the game inadvertent "advertisers" for the product.

External links

• Wordscraper application on facebook