Scrabble Helpers

Scrabble Helpers – Literati

By Chris Perrin

Many times, Scrabble players who cannot find a local game instead seek out Scrabble helpers—ways to play the game without having to find one or more players to sit at a table and have a game. However, there is a small dilemma for these players looking for Scrabble helpers. Many of them are going to have to be online and there are not that many different sites on which to play online Scrabble.

This is largely due to intellectual property issues surrounding the game. Scrabble is owned by Hasbro so companies cannot just release a game, call it Scrabble and operate as a business. Ask Scrabbleous, a Scrabble helper that was closed down by lawyers because it was a direct Scrabble copy without any attempt made to hide the fact.

This means that if you want to play the genuine article, there is a good chance you are going to have to pay to download the full version of the game. However, if all you want is a Scrabble helper that closely mirrors the original game and features all the challenge of player-versus-player word action, there is another option: Yahoo! Games’ Literati.

Literati is, for lack of a better term, a Scrabble clone. The game challenges players to make words from tiles, each of which has a point value assigned to them. The game takes place on a fifteen-by-fifteen square game board that allows players to earn different score bonuses based on where the words are played. Even those bonus squares are the same as in Scrabble: double and triple letter and double and triple word scores.

In Literati, the first word is played on the board and all subsequent words must build off that original word. Play continues until there are no more tiles left or there are no valid plays. Bonuses are handed out for using all letters in your hand.

Sound familiar? It should. For all intents and purposes, Literati is exactly like Scrabble. The biggest difference between the two games is the point values for the tiles, which in Literati range from one to five, whereas in Scrabble they can be worth larger amounts (though not that much larger.)

Because the two games are so similar, Literati is the perfect Scrabble helper. The game forces players to use all of the same skills that one would need to be a great Scrabble player. You have to have a large vocabulary so that you can score the most points possible (or in some cases, so you have a word to play at all.) Obviously, playing the game also builds vocabulary as players are exposed to new words from opponents (and if they are using Scrabble cheats, themselves.)

Still, part of the thing that draws players to Scrabble is that it not only forces players to think about the types of words they can make with their tiles, it also has a strategy all on its own. This strategy deals with when to use tiles and how to play the board so that you can put tiles on the bonus squares and your opponent cannot. Because Literati has the same type of bonus squares as Scrabble, the game teaches players these critical strategies. In this regard, Literati has a huge advantage over other pure word games like TextTwist or Chicktionary because players do not just need to know a good number of words, they need to work the board for the highest score.

However, Literati is not a perfect trainer for Scrabble strategy because the Literati board features more bonus squares than a standard Scrabble board. With that being said, Literati can still teach proper board strategy, Literati players should just be aware of the differences.

There is one final way that Literati can help players improve their Scrabble game: Yahoo! Games features their very own set of Literati tournaments. Tournaments come in two varieties: league and official. Both types of Tournaments are excellent simulations of what a player would have to go through should they ever decide to try to qualify for some of the offline Scrabble associations’ tournaments (which may sound geeky, but does offer a decent cash award. It might also get you mocked on Cheap Seats, though.)

The official Yahoo! Games tournaments take themselves just as seriously as even the World Championships of Scrabble. They are Single Elimination (which means that you lose once and then you are out) and all pairing is done automatically. If you win, you move on to the next round and play again. If you lose, the best you can do is observe another game.

Each round in the tournament will last a maximum of thirty minutes (which forces players to think quickly). The interesting thing about the time limit is that if there is not a clear winner, in other words if all players still have tiles, Yahoo!’s software will grant the win to the player that took the least amount of time. That means if you are using a Scrabble cheat, you better be fast about it. Also, if you decide to play in a Yahoo! tournament, do not be late. If a player does not show after three minutes, they may be subject to automatic forfeiture.

It is features like these that make Literati a fine Scrabble helper. It offers essentially the exact same play style, the rules are virtually identical, and the game has tournaments for sharpening your mental endurance before facing a real life tournament that might offer cash prizes.

Naturally, the question might arise whether Literati would ever one day face the same fate as Scrabbleous and be shut down because it is almost identical to original board game. However, this not likely to happen because the programmers at Yahoo! changed just enough rules to make the game different and the software is not trying to use a name that basically screams “This game is Scrabble.” Because of these differences, anyone who needs to play a little casual online Scrabble without having to pay a fee or really feels like they can be a competitive player with a bit more practice has a Scrabble helper they can access quickly and easily on the Internet. Let the games begin!

You can support our website by picking up a new Diamond Anniversary Scrabble game at Amazon. It's beautiful, and relatively inexpensive.

Literati Scrabble Helpers

Sitemap