We've been receiving a lot of interest about whether a Scrabulizer mobile application will be made available, in particular for the iPhone. The answer is that we're working on it.
We want to give you something that you'll really enjoy using, and we know that nobody likes the often tedious task of entering letters into the board. That is why we gave you the
Firefox plugin. So for the iPhone we're doing something a bit special. We have created a technology to read a Scrabble board from a camera, similar to how cameras read vehicle registration plates. The idea is that you'll be able to enter your Scrabble board simply by taking a photo of it using the phone's built-in camera.
We've now started to build an iPhone application around this technology, and the good news is that it has been designed to work on almost any phone, so we hope to eventually release versions for other phones too.
It's too early to be able to suggest when it may be available, but we'll likely run beta testing prior to public release. If you're interested in updates, or being a beta tester then keep an eye on our new
Twitter feed for previews and early news.
As many of you will know, our Firefox extension lets you import your Lexulous and Wordscraper games in to Scrabulizer. The extension supports the Facebook versions of Lexulous and Wordscraper in addition to the Lexulous.com play by email games.
However, if you don't use Firefox or want to use Scrabulizer with the Lexulous live game, then you've been stuck with entering the bonuses and tile scores manually. Help is now at hand - next time you go to Scrabulizer you'll see a Load Game Design drop down box allowing you to change to a Lexulous or standard Wordscraper layout. You can also set your preferred game design by editing your profile.
If you have your own custom design that you'd like to reuse in a new game, then you can now do this using saved games. In the list of saved games you'll now see a Use Design link under each game. Click this to load in just the design from the game without the tiles on the board and rack.
I'm sure most people reading this blog will have heard about the litigation brought by Hasbro against Scrabulous (a.k.a Lexulous). If not, it was on the news, where have you been? Well, the latest update is that a settlement has been reached. Lexulous, and by association, Wordscraper, have modified the rules of the game to be different enough from the Scrabble rules. So the lawyers are all happy now, or at least will be once the cheques have cleared. Hoorah!
We have been keeping up with changes to ensure our users can benefit from using Scrabulizer with the customisable "Lexulous" rules. For a while now you have been able to setup your own board layouts, tile scores, tile distribution and since last week we also support 8 letter racks. For those using our Wordscraper plug-in, there is a new version (v1.0.2) that you should update to in order to get all the new feature benefits. Otherwise you will find it all by clicking the "Game Design" button.
To follow the Lexulous rules, our scoring continues to give a 50 point bonus for using 7 rack tiles, plus an extra 10 points for using 8. At least until they change their minds again.
Finally, may we wish you all a merry Christmas and new year, and we hope you play lots of Scrabble over the holidays :)
I hope most people will agree with me that Scrabulous has done wonderful things for Scrabble, and despite it's numerous short-comings, the fact is people loved it, so it's a real shame that it's been forced out of Facebook. But this isn't the end of Scrabble online!
You can still play the official Mattel/Hasbro Scrabble applications on Facebook, but if this feels too much like treachery, then you can play Scrabulous on their official site or the replacement Facebook application, Wordscraper, from the same people who brought you Scrabulous. We've even written a plugin which lets you import your games from Wordscraper directly into Scrabulizer so no more tedious board setups!
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Those of you who play our puzzles may already know of "asmit" as the name at the top of many of our leader boards. Asmit, real name Arian Smit, clearly knows a thing or two about Scrabble, and he's been investigating a question for us that many players have pondered: "What is the highest possible scoring Scrabble move?"
What follows is Arian's findings, and how in a single move you can score a whopping 2044 points!
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Online Scrabble has been a hot topic ever since Scrabulous came to Facebook and became a massive hit, currently boasting 700,000 active daily users! With any game there will always be people looking for a way to cheat, and sites created specifically for cheating started to spring up.
Scrabulizer was created a couple of years before this revolution started, and was actually designed to solve Scrabble puzzles like those you find in newspapers and magazines rather than for cheating in real games. The dawning of Scrabulous meant Scrabulizer's popularity grew a lot, even getting press in national newspapers. For good or bad, Scrabulizer was becoming a haven for the Scrabble cheat and the site changed accordingly, becoming even more cheat-tastic by adding game saving, and strategy analysis.
We try to encourage everyone to play fair, and like to offer more than just a cheat site, by including extra goodies like
puzzles. It's a great tool for learning and practicing Scrabble, as well as for improving your vocabulary, not just for cheating.
So do Scrabble cheaters ever prosper? Answers on the back of a stamped address envelope, or posted in the comments below.
Hello Everybody!
We always like to hear from you, and we thought that just maybe you'd like to hear from us, so we've started a blog!
First thing to mention is the re-branding that many of you will have noticed. We are now
Scrabulizer! The old scrabblesolver.co.uk name will continue to work, although you will have to log in again if you had asked to be remembered.
Second, we've taken this opportunity to add lots of goodies that you've been asking us for, such as:
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