Related post: My review of Words With Friends 2 

UPDATE – September 13, 2017

This post was originally published in October of 2016. The original text is down below the line. Words With Friends’ rollout of its coins feature has been a long, confusing ordeal which has left many players searching for answers. I’ll try to answer those questions here as best as I can. As of this date, the new features are still being rolled out. Even if you have the latest version of the app, you still may not have the new features.

Players are accumulating coins by completing little challenges within the game. And these coins can also be purchased. Players can trade in these coins for “Power Ups.” The first Power Up is called Hindsight. It shows you a good move on the board that you could’ve played on your previous turn. While that seems quite harmless, it can and often does reveal a place on the board where a player can move on his/her next turn. For example, in the board below, I played OH for only 11 points. I had no idea I could’ve placed an E in front of UPHROE. But after using Hindsight, I now know that I can do so on my next turn because I still have an E. So there’s definitely a competitive advantage in using the Hindsight feature.

However, after using the Swap+ feature in a few random games, I must admit that it’s fun to use. It sets you up to get more bingos and achieve higher scores, which is great. But there are two fundamental problems with the feature. First of all, it fundamentally changes the game. The challenge of working with your letters, however good or bad they are, gives way to the temptation of swapping tiles on every play to get the perfect rack. It reminds me of when my friends and I used to lower the baskeball goal from 10 to 8 feet so we could dunk on it. Totally fun, but it wasn’t exactly basketball. The inherent challenge of basketball is to get the ball through a regulation basket that is 10 feet high. This new game we created was more like dunkball.

The second issue I have with the Swap+ feature is more problematic; there is no way of knowing if your opponent is using it. Dunkball doesn’t have this problem. In dunkball, my opponent and I are both using the advantage of a lower basket and we can both see each other using it. In this new pro-offense version of Words With Friends, it’s unclear whether or not you should be using the Swap+ feature. If your opponent is using it, then you’d like to use it too. But if he’s not using it, you shouldn’t be using it either. But unless the two of you have an unlikely chat about this subject beforehand, you have no way of knowing if one of you is playing with an unfair advantage.

Zynga has a classic version of Words With Friends in both the Apple and Android app stores in which you cannot use any of these new features. Your opponent, however, can use the features against you…even if you’re using this classic version. My wife’s screen is below on the left. She’s using the classic version of the game and she doesn’t have any of the new features. After she plays DIVEST, you can see on the other screen that I can use the new features against her.

Again, very unfair. The fact that you had to leave the app and find this post to learn more about these features is a sure sign that Zynga is confusing the very people who loved their game the way it was. Here’s a sample of the type of feedback they’re getting:

I’ve played WWFs since the beginning. I don’t want to play with people who use this. Stop adding these cheat options!

— LuvLite (@Gr8ful2BeNCA) September 13, 2017

Instead of figuring out ways to eliminate cheating from their game, Zynga has made cheating a feature of the game. Not only is it a bad idea, but it’s taken them nearly a year to roll it out. Down below is my original commentary on the Swap+ feature from October of 2016 when I first heard about it. Feel free to comment down below with your thoughts. Thanks!

another post you may like:

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If Words With Friends begins to allow players to swap out their letters without losing their turn, there’s no telling what kind of insanity will follow;

– You can eat ice cream without getting fat.
– You can drink whiskey all night and feel great the next morning.
– You can jump off buildings and fly.

In other words, there are no consequences anymore! Until now, swapping tiles (exchanging your current letters for new ones) has been a heavy decision to make during a Words With Friends match. The plus side is that it refreshes your tile rack with new letters, which is helpful in those moments when your rack looks like this:

But the downside of a swap is that it has always resulted in the loss of your turn. So let’s put that into perspective: Your tile rack sucks. You’re either loaded with vowels or with consonants, Also, at this point of the game you’re likely being crushed by your opponent and the swap is a last-ditch effort to turn your luck around.

In boxing, this would be the equivalent of giving your opponent a clean shot to your face in the hope that…after his punch, you’ll be in position to uppercut his jaw. It’s a desperate move but it just might work. Zynga, the company behind Words With Friends, apparently wants all the punches thrown in their game to be uppercuts.

In some versions of the game, Zynga is slowly rolling out a feature in which players can use coins to swap out tiles and not lose their turn. Coins are earned by playing games with Smart Match and other regular games.

Luck, Risk & Fairness

I’m not sure what I think about this feature. But I do know that it certainly changes some key dynamics of the game, namely luck, risk and fairness. Instead of working with the letters you’re given, creating your own luck and dare I say it…learning new words, you simply swap your unwanted letters with no consequences.

And if your opponent has no coins, defeating him will be like shooting fish in a barrel. It brings up the same issue from a few years back when some players were using the Word Meter (because they paid for the coins to use it) against opponents who were not using it. That’s what we call an unfair advantage.

Change is good and Zynga has certainly made some good changes, especially the free Word Meter, the Tile Bag and the Fast Play version. And let’s not forget that Words With Friends itself was a drastic change for all us former Scrabble players. We were tired of dominating the few friends who were still willing to play us on a physical board. Words With Friends came along and enabled us to play at any time with people all over the world.

But when will Zynga stop trying so hard to make their game so easy to play? At what point do they back off and say “THIS is our game. You gotta be a little smart to play it. Learn it or leave it.” It already allows you to try invalid words, test the strength of your word and see what’s left in the tile bag. Try any of these in a Scrabble tournament and see what happens.

And now you can swap tiles willy-nilly without losing your turn. At this rate…we can expect Zynga to roll out the following features in the next few years

– LETTER REQUEST – “Just tell us what letters you want and we’ll give them to you.”
– ANAGRAM MAGIC – “See a list of all the words you can play…and where you should play them.”
– COIN CONVERTER – “For every 10 coins you buy, we’ll add 100 points to your score!!”
– SKIP THE GAME – “You don’t even have to play the game! Buy our coins and we’ll just give you the win.”

I probably need to cut Zynga some slack. They created a game that we all love to play. They’re fully entitled to monetize it and make it appeal to a big audience. Just imagine how difficult it is nowadays to market a word game to the younger generations. I saw a group of teens the other day…all on their phones, not talking to each other. I don’t know what they were looking at, but I doubt it was improving their vocabularies.

As it pertains to us, we’ll continue organizing WWF tournaments that are frequent, fair and fun. We’ll keep an eye on this new WWF feature and we’ll update this post with anything we learn about it.

We love our word game community and we want to hear your thoughts about it. Please comment below.