Free Friday - Scrabble Online

Happy Friday! Here's some Free Scrabble for you.

I tried out a few free Scrabble games online to see how invasive the advertising was, how much they demanded from a player in return for a game and how much data they were taking in the background.

Wow. I came up with two that were okay.

The first I tried was Pogo Scrabble. It's probably the most invasive of the three I tried. It requires a sign up and there are loads of ads. It will not run on all browsers, nor will it run on browsers with protection against malevolent scripts or Flash. On Firefox I was met with mostly a blank screen, faint, blinking outlines of boxes and some sort of Colonial Characters that ghosted in and out of sight. It was weird and kind of creepy. I finally got into the site on an unprotected Chrome browser. (I'm going to need a browser bath.) The ads were unbearable and long. Definitely use a junk email to make an account.

The game, OTOH, was good. The interface was intuitive, it played smoothly and the novice level bot kicked my butt. As usual.

The Internet Scrabble Club is probably the most fun you will have playing Scrabble with friends. Or just watching people play Scrabble. Not sure how much fun that is, but the option is there.

You have to sign up for the IRC nickname in order to get in, but it's an easy process. Playing, is a different matter. This is nearly as old school as it gets without getting the board down from the attic.

If you can get a friend to sign up, it's quite fun. You can also play strangers and there is a convoluted ranking system for judging who you want to play. There's also a code of conduct that you can sign and look for when finding a play partner. So, keep in mind this is a Scrabble *Club* there are directions and rules you have to follow. They are spelled out clearly in the instructions, so read them once you get a feel for the place.

Then there's Lexulous, which I found to be the easiest of the lot. Give the game a try before giving out your email address. But beware - The bot kicked my butt and then mopped me up with a tissue. Honestly, it was the best of the lot.