Scrabble

Rating:
Summary: Scrabble for the Mac
Review: According to the Amazon.com information, this version of Scrabble was for Win 95, win 98, and ME, plus Mac OS. What I got was for Win 3.1, and Win 95, plus Mac. It would not load on my Mac I BOOK, OSX. I think this is a very old, old, version and not made to work on Mac OSX. I rated it a "1" because I can't load it, therefore can't use it.

Rating:
Summary: Scrabble for the Mac
Review: According to the Amazon.com information, this version of Scrabble was for Win 95, win 98, and ME, plus Mac OS. What I got was for Win 3.1, and Win 95, plus Mac. It would not load on my Mac I BOOK, OSX. I think this is a very old, old, version and not made to work on Mac OSX. I rated it a "1" because I can't load it, therefore can't use it.

Rating:
Summary: Not a bad Scrabble software game, excellent value
Review: This is an excellent version of computer Scrabble, with one reservation which I will note.

The graphics are lovely--this looks like a Scrabble board, with wooden tiles and the correct distribution of letters, premium board tiles and scoring. You can even have sound effects to give the impression you are playing on cardboard and wood (you get the option to have clicks and whooshes in the sound effects.)

The software gives you the possibility to play over a local area network with another player, over the internet with an ISP (like MSN Game Zone) or against a computer player "Maven." You can play with optional hints for the "best" play (debatable, as the computer is not a particularly defensive player) and get a table of remaining letters and a game recap in the info section. A built-in dictionary can be customized. The rack can be organized by ascending, descending letter or vowels first, or you can shuffle to find your word combinations.

The only quibble I have with this software, which I deem an excellent value for the money, is that "Maven" is an annoying player. You can choose how good Maven is, from average, to champion, but it seems that the software algorithm to make Maven a Scrabble champ is to give YOU nothing but vowels. Exchanging the rack is no help--they just come back again. While I realize that making a Deep Blue computer version of Scrabble would require a Cray Supercomputer and the efforts of a thousand programmers, it's still somewhat annoying to play against Maven at a reasonable level. Still, if you can pull off a 123-point bingo word on a triple-word tile, it can be sweet, indeed. In your face, Maven!

Highly recommended.