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In-Depth Review
WordsWorth
Thursday, January 29th, 2009 at 1:42 PM - by Bob LeVitus
You know from my five star review of wurdle that I'm a sucker for a good word game and WordsWorth is definitely one of those. Like wurdle, WordsWorth is reasonably-priced ($1.99), addictive, and ever-so-much fun.
The object is to link letters into words by either dragging across them or tapping them one at a time and then tapping the Submit button at the bottom of the screen. When you've spelled an actual word it appears at the top of the screen with the number of points it is worth as shown here (the word "hone" is worth 374 points):

Longer words using rare letters (like J, Z, and Qu, for example, score higher than short words with more common letters such as, say, "hone," score fewer points.
There are several types of special letter tiles like the "N" in the figure above, which is a timed tile. If the timer goes all the way around (to the noon position), it explodes and the game is over.
Two more types of special tiles are the wild card (blue) and the bonus tile (green) shown in the picture below.

Another way to score additional points is by spelling a "buzzword," such as "AHA" in the picture above.
In wurdle you work against the clock with a fixed time limit. WordsWorth doesn't have a fixed time limit per game. Instead, it's level-based -- each time you achieve the prescribed number of points you advance to the next level. And the levels grow increasingly harder with more and rarer timed tiles, fewer vowels, and more rare consonants.
When you can't find any more words on the screen, you can shuffle the tiles by shaking your iPhone or iPod touch or tapping the little man at the bottom of the screen. But be careful -- you have a limited number of shuffles available as denoted by the little hats in the upper right corner of the screen below your score (there are four of them in that last picture).
The bar under the word "with" in the previous picture lets you know how close you are to completing the current level; I'd say I'm about 75% of the way to the next level in the last picture above.
The game is has numerous options that let you increase or decrease its difficulty. You can choose grid sizes from 4 x 4 to 7 x 7. The first picture in this review shows a 5 x 5 grid; the second shows a 7 x 7. You can also select minimum word size, scrambles earned per level, timer delay, and word list dictionary used (TWL, SOWPODS, or ENABLE).

Finally, unlike some games there is a free version (WordsWorth Lite) available so you can try before you buy. It's the same in every way but limited to just three levels (vs. twenty in the $1.99 version). For what it's worth, my high score is 164,914 after 9 or 10 levels.
The Bottom Line
WordsWorth is a lot of fun, extremely addicting, and quite challenging. If you like word games such as Boggle or Scrabble, I'm sure you'll enjoy WordsWorth as much as I do (which is a lot).
Just The Facts
Pros:
Reasonably priced, addictive, lots of options.
Cons:
None I can think of.
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