Fun With Words

As is true of a lot of writers, I'm sure, my favourite catwaxing pastimes still include words, mostly in reading them or playing games with them. As I'd previously mentioned that there is a Facebook game that eats up copious amounts of my time, I thought now would be as good a time as any to share it with you.

It's called Wordy and it's a bit peculiar. There are multiple ways to play -- my favourite is Word Twist, where you are given a grid of letters and must move them around to form words. Calling it "Word Twist" is a bit of a misnomer, as you can exchange any two letters regardless of where they are, but that's not where the peculiarity comes in.

The peculiarity arises because, if I'm not mistaken, this game was originally written in Turkish. This leads to some translation errors between levels, and also some strange gaps in the game itself. For instance, I have played the game for months now, and not once has the letter "N" made its way onto the board. Likewise, while the game will accept the word "cwm", it will not accept the word "zoo." There are occasionally times when I just resort to shifting letters around hoping the AI will recognize words that I do not.

The most frustrating part of the game, though, is the fact that it will occasionally stop recognizing my mouse clicks, meaning that have to refresh the page and start over from scratch if I want to keep playing. And yet, despite all this, I do want to keep playing. It's addictive, and that's the way internet games are supposed to be.