This is not by any means new, in fact I first played it as a child and I dont think it was that new then. It first came out on a PC some years ago, this version was recently released by Focus in their £9.99 range.
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One thing that always caused arguments when I played the board game were words that were for one reason or another not allowed. With the computer version if its not in the dictionary that it uses, then its not a word. Another, the computer never makes an accidental mistake with the score and perhaps most important dare I say it no one can cheat. You can also play against the computer but then I cannot confirm that it does not cheat, but as it always seems to beat me I would say that, wouldnt I.
Not only can you play the standard board game of scrabble but five connected variants as well. The box states you need 650MB of hard disk space, it only took 441MB for my install and around 3 minutes to install on a quite fast Pentium.
Specifications suggest Windows 98 or later, Pentium II 400 or better, 64MB of memory and 16MB graphics with Direct X 8.1 or better.
The other five games are Duplicate Scrabble that is quite involved, I only tried it against the computer where the word that scores best on each round stays on the board, certainly a game best played on a PC.
The next is Anagram where the computer displays the tiles to make the word jumbled up and you have to place them in the correct order. With all these variants there are options as to the size of the word etc, far more difficult than you may think especially as I assume there is only one possible solution.
Conundrum rather similar to Anagram but with a few twists, it is possible to move to the right side of the screen and access the word list and I found more than a few words I never even imagined existed.
Word Challenge at its easiest level should be simple enough make six words of at least three letters so given that the first word may be CAT you need to add at least three letters should you have AKE you could add that under the T. Again lots of options and believe me not as easy as you may think.
Making the Point is the last variant where in the easiest mode you have to score a set number of points (around 40) in six moves. There are six words already on the board so not that many spaces and the letters I started with were IIIKUUU, I never did win as yet at this, the best I got was 41 when my target was 42.
So dependant on the game up to four players (three of these can be the computer) or you can play on a local network or even across the Internet I have tried neither its bad enough when I laugh at my own inadequacies.
Certainly a good £9.99 and as the computer keeps score there can be no arguments, it is stated to be for 3+ I think that is rather optimistic as I would think 8+ is nearer the mark. All the focus range can be seen as www.focusmm.co.uk
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