If you like words and if you like friends you will love Words with Friends! Words with Friends is one of the most popular online word games and it was developed by Zynga company for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Facebook, Kindle Fire, and Nook Tablet platforms. It is considered to be a scrabble-like game since the rules of the two games are very similar.
If you want to know how to play, you will need Words with Friends Instructions. That means you are in just the right place to learn all about this game! Take a look and let’s start from the beginning!
Contents
Start a Game
There are five different ways to start a game in Words with Friends. One of them is to ask your friends for their username in the Words with Friends system and find them. Another one is to look for and challenge your Facebook friends. The third option is to search for a random opponent who will automatically be assigned to you. The fourth option is to choose someone from your phone contact list. The app will try to find someone on the system by looking for their email addresses and cell phone numbers in your contact list. If the app cannot find anyone, you will get the chance to send them an email invitation to join Words with Friends community. Pass And Play is a great option and you can use it to play against the friend who is right next to you.
Frequency and Point Value of Letters
When you start the game, the board appears on your screen and you and your friend will get 7 letter tiles each. There are a total of 104 letter tiles in Words with Friends, of which 102 are emblazoned with one of the letters in the English alphabet, while two tiles are blank. Every letter has a point value except blank tiles. The blank tiles carry no points, but they can replace any other letter. In the table below you can see the frequency and point value of each letter in Words with Friends:
| Letter | Number of tiles | Point value | Letter | Number of tiles | Point value |
| A | 9 | 1 | O | 8 | 1 |
| B | 2 | 4 | P | 2 | 4 |
| C | 2 | 4 | Q | 1 | 10 |
| D | 5 | 2 | R | 6 | 1 |
| E | 13 | 1 | S | 5 | 1 |
| F | 2 | 4 | T | 7 | 1 |
| G | 3 | 3 | U | 4 | 2 |
| H | 4 | 3 | V | 2 | 5 |
| I | 8 | 1 | W | 2 | 4 |
| J | 1 | 10 | X | 1 | 8 |
| K | 1 | 5 | Y | 2 | 3 |
| L | 4 | 2 | Z | 1 | 10 |
| M | 2 | 4 | Blank tile | 2 | 0 |
| N | 5 | 2 |
Placing the Words
The first letter has to be placed on the plus square in the center of the board. All of the subsequent words have to share at least one tile with at least one word already placed on the board. You can create words aligned vertically, from top to down, and horizontally, from left to right. You can create multiple new words using your tiles and neighboring letters as long as you create legal words. On the Words with Friends home page you will receive notification when your turn to play comes.
Acceptable Words in Words with Friends
There are more than 173,000 acceptable words that you can use in Words with Friends. Proper nouns, abbreviations, prefixes and suffixes standing alone, words requiring a hyphen or an apostrophe, derogatory words, or racial slurs are not acceptable in this game. The list of acceptable words is based on the Enhanced North American Benchmark Lexicon: ENABLE. If you think that a word should be included in the Words with Friends list of acceptable words, you can also suggest it to the game development team.
Scoring Points
You will get points for each word that you create during the game. How many points you get depends on the point value of the letters and the squares you use in order to create that word.
Premium Squares
There are several premium squares on the board: DL, TL, DW and TW. When you use these squares you can get a lot of additional points. Premium squares DL and TL double and triple the value of the letters that are placed on them. Squares DW and TW double and triple the value of the entire word when one of the word’s letters is placed on them. Premium squares bring you additional points only when you use them for the first time. For example, if you create the word TAX and X is on a TL square, you will get 26 points since T carries 1 point, A carries 1 point too, and X carries 8 points. If your friend adds ES and creates the word TAXES, he will get just 12 points since the TL square has already been used.
If you play all 7 tiles in one move you will get 35 additional points.
Winning
To win this game you have to get more points than your friend. In order to achieve this you need to practice as well as know some of the strategies that you can use to boost your score. We can also recommend Words with Friends Help as a great tool that you can use for training and educative sessions of the game. This application is easy to use and it will help you to find appropriate words when you are stuck with the tiles you have.
Other Words with Friends Instructions
There are some important buttons you have to know when you want to play Words with Friends. In this part of the article you can read about various buttons and their functions.
Play or Pass
When it is your turn to play and if you place the word on the board, the button “play” will be active. In order to upload this word you will have to click on it.
If you cannot find a good word the “pass” button will be offered instead of “play” and you can use it to skip your turn and let your friend play again. Just be careful: if you use this option three times in a row you will lose the game. In these situations you will find our Words with Friends Help very useful.
Shuffle or Recall
Using the “shuffle” option will shuffle the tiles in your rack so they are arranged differently. This can help you get some new ideas for words that you can make from the available letters. You can also activate this option by shaking your mobile device.
When you place some letters on a board this button will be transformed into “recall”. If you change your mind and do not want to play that word, clicking on the “recall” button will return all of the letters back to your rack.
Swap Option
When it is your turn to play, and if there are letters remaining, the “swap” option will be active. You can use this option to change some or all of the letters in your rack.
When you use this option you will not be able to place any letters on the board and your opponent will play next, as if you had used the “pass” option.
More Button
When you click on the “more” button you will see some additional options such as “resign” (we hope that you won’t use it very often), “the count” and some of the premium options. “The count” is a free option that allows you to see your current score for the word as you place the letters on the board.
Chat Option and Marriages?
While playing Words with Friends you can use the built-in chat option to exchange impressions or simply to have a chat session with your friend. Interesting fact: ever since this option was made available for the game, several romantic relationships have begun in the Words with Friends community and some of them ended in marriages.
Game Over
The game ends when one player plays the last tile in his rack after there are no more tiles in the pool of the letters or when one of the players uses the “pass” option three times in a row. If you finish the game first, you will get the points from the tiles that were left in an opponents rack as a bonus. The same amount of points will be deducted from the opponents score.
When you are chatting on words with friends can anybody else see the conversation
The chat can not be seen by anyone else as the NSA 😉 and everyone else who has the access to your or your opponent’s account.
How do I get rid of a name/person who keeps showing up when I have never even played a game with? It comes and goes as it pleases and is more of a nuisance.
I fully understand this, but there is unfortunately no solution. Maybe the game developers should adjust this.
How do you begin a game with a player in the community players section? The Let’s Play button is not active.
Where is pass on play in the “new” words with friends? Is this no longer an option?
I can’t get my pass button to turn on. Any ideas?
I m not able to access ” count” and I am not getting a score for possible current word.
: (. Please help.
I am up by 120 points with only one letter left a Z .which I can’t play. Problem is I already passed twice . If I pass again do I automatically lose even though I am up by 120 points . My opponent also is stuck with one letter .?
Don’t worry, you don’t lose by passing your turn. You are going to win at the end.
How do I send an email invite to play that will link or tell to download app and play?
Thank you
Hi Nur,
as far as I can see, there isn’t an option to send an email invitation in the current version of Words with Friends.
I want to invite a friend to play WWF who hasnt played before. By sending an invitation to them by email what do thry have to do?
Hi Pat,
sorry but I can’t check it since I have up to date version, which does not have email invite option.
But it should be easy and your friend will probably know what to do when he/she gets the email.
I keep trying to play my friend but this player is no longer available keeps popping up, what does that mean ???
Hi tammy,
it could mean that your friend has stopped to play and has deleted WWF app.
my screen only shows Connect with Email and Connect with Facebook. what happened to the option of playing with random opponents. i was actually in quite a few games – all gone and no option to play with random…? Did something change?
Hi jrm,
there should be an option Smart Match, which is basically a new name for the former option random opponent. Additionally, there is an option Community Match, where you can view a random opponent and choose whether to play or not with him/her.