Lexulous: the Best New Place to Play Free Scrabble Online

Where can I play free Scrabble online, you ask? Or do you wonder what happened to Scrabulous? Because Hasboro filed suit against Scrabulous stating that it was infringing upon its trademarked board game Scrabble, Scrabulous closed down its doors to the confusion and disappointment of many of its online players worldwide who played on Facebook or on the scrabulous.com site itself. Fortunately for us word game freaks, the original developers of Scrabulous, the Argawalla brothers, created another online word game called Lexulous. Lexulous.com is another place where you can play free online Scrabble with some modifications that do not infringe upon the rights of the original trademark owners of the Scrabble board game. If you loved Scrabulous, you will love Lexulous too. Basically, it's the same free online word game based on Scrabble with a few alterations.

What are the changes in this modified version of the free online Scrabble game, you ask? For one thing, instead of seven tiles on your rack, you will find eight tiles in Lexulous. This threw me off at first, but now, I have gotten used to it. In fact, it makes the elusive bingo easier to attain. Along with the 8 tiles, you can now score a bingo whether using seven or all eight of the tiles on your rack. You can get an additional forty points or fifty points when using seven tiles or all eight tiles in one move, respectively. As you can imagine, it makes it easier to find seven letter words when you have an extra tile to play. Another difference between Scrabulous and Lexulous, are the value points given to some of its tiles. For example, while a Z was worth ten points in Scrabulous, the letter Z is worth twelve points in Lexulous, and while the letter P was worth two points in Scrabulous, the letter P is worth four points in Lexulous. Another thing you will notice is the difference in the number of tiles of certain letters. For instance, in Scrabulous, there were four tiles with the letter S. In Lexulous, there are three tiles with the letter S. You can find all of this information when you play the Lexulous version of free online Scrabble at Facebook or on lexulous.com when you click on the tile distribution star icon within the game itself.

Other than that, Lexulous has all of the same great features of the free online Scrabble game Scrabulous including multi-player games, solitaire games, player ranking, timed games which takes care of the problem of sitters, a fair adjudication system that takes care of the problem of quitters (if your opponent quits in the middle of a game, you will automatically win and receive appropriate ranking after a few days if the player never resumes the game), a chat box within the game, the ability to set a formula and choose opponents based on their ranking and the ability to view an opponent's game history. The Facebook version of Lexulous has additional user friendly features such as a private notes tab where a player can take notes to remind themselves of future possible moves, a dictionary for unchallenged games, player stats and a progress graph that shows you and your opponents plays and points within a game. Also, when you score a bingo in Lexulous on Facebook, you have the option of publishing your word and its score on your wall so your friends can see the amazing points that you just earned on your latest bingo.

There are three places where you can play this modified version of the free online Scrabble game. You can play for free at www.lexulous.com or within Facebook and challenge your friends. For $3.99 you can buy the Lexulous app and play it for free on your iPhone or iPod Touch via WiFi. Unfinished games on your iPhone or iPod Touch can be played on Facebook. I believe the majority of Scrabulous fans will love Lexulous. Lexulous may not be appropriate for those who play in club or official Scrabble tournaments since the number and values of certain tiles are different from the original Scrabble game. For those of you who must play Scrabble by its original rules and point system, you can play free online Scrabble with the official Scrabble app on Facebook. However, as of today, Facebook users give the Lexulous app 4.7 out of 5 stars based on 5597 reviews while they give the Scrabble app on Facebook 3.1 out of 5 stars based on 2474 reviews. My friends who have tried the Scrabble app on Facebook have told me that they are sticking with the Lexulous app because of its lack of user friendly features that are included within Lexulous. I encourage all of you fellow word nerds to try and compare the two applications on Facebook and make the decision yourself. After all, they are both places where you can play free Scrabble online.