Letterpress surprised me. I'm not much for Scrabble, Boggle or other word games. Letterpress changed my mind with its addictive approach to vocabulary ability-based multiplayer games.
Letterpress is a hyper-competitive, one-on-one version of Scrabble. There's a board of letters. Players score points by stringing them together into words, the longer the better. Picking a letter makes it that player's color; picking an opponent's letter changes its color and takes their points away. Any letter surrounded by the same color does not give the other player points for using it.
The game is easier understood in practice than it sounds.
With all the rules in play, Letterpress becomes a game of choosing long words to surround one's own letters while taking away letters from one's opponent. The extra layer of tactics atop basic vocabulary testing adds fun.
Unfortunately, what should be a basic vocabulary test often becomes cheapened when someone starts using Google. It's easy to feed letters into Google and find playable words. Since Letterpress isn't played in person like Scrabble, one has no idea if the other player is playing fair.
For example, one opponent beat me by playing "fynbos," which the University of the Western Cape said is a shrub from the Western Cape of South Africa. Either that player has an impressive knowledge of South African shrubbery, or he or she looked it up.
There's plenty of time to look words up during a match since Letterpress is played asynchronously. One player makes a move and waits for the other to react.
I rarely played a game in one session, instead making moves between classes every hour or so. It's good for a quick 30-second hit of entertainment in the Starbucks line or while waiting for class to start.
Letterpress is free on the App Store, but not available Android's Play Store. There is a $1.99 in-app upgrade for multiple simultaneous games and seeing the history of every word played in a game. I'd recommend it to any word game fan.
Kyle Nazario is the intrigue editor for The Plainsman. He can be reached at intrigue@theplainsman.com.
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