Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Words With Friends Rulebook : The Zynga With Friends Helpdesk

Gameplay:

Players exchange turns forming words horizontally or vertically on the board, trying to score as many points as possible for each word.  

Placement Rules:

The first word must be placed so that 1 of the tiles is on the star in the center of the board.

Every word following that must be placed so that at least 1 tile is shared from an existing word on the board.

Tiles can only be placed in the same line vertically or horizontally each turn.  

Tiles can be placed so that multiple new words are formed simultaneously using neighboring letters. 

Words cannot be placed if they create an illegal word using neighboring letters.

Scoring:

Double the value of any tiles that were played this turn on a DL space, and triple the value of any tile that was played on a TL space this turn.  Do not double the value of tiles on DL and TL spaces for tiles that were played on previous rounds.

Add up the values of all letters in the word, even if some were played on a previous turn.

Double the value of the word if any tiles this turn were played on a DW space (and double it again in the case were 2 DW spaces were played upon). Triple the value of the word if any tiles this turn were played on a TW space (and triple it again if 2 TW spaces were used).  Do not multiply words if tiles on DW or TW spaces were used from a previous turn.

It is possible to create multiple words with the same play.  In this case, score each new word separately, including bonuses, and sum all of the new words together.

35 bonus points are awarded whenever a player uses all 7 tiles on their rack in a single turn.

End Game Rules:

The game ends when one player plays every tile in his rack, and there are no tiles remaining to draw from.  The game could also end if three successive turns have occurred with no scoring and as long as the score is not zero-zero.

After the last tile is played, the opposing player will lose points equal to the sum of the value of his remaining tiles.  This amount is then awarded to the player who placed the last tile.

In the case of a tie, the player who had the highest score before the game ended is the winner.

Word List:

The Enhanced North American Benchmark Lexicon (ENABLE): Originally released in 1997 and updated in 2000. This list of 173,528 has been in the Public Domain since its release.Tap here to visit the site where the word list resides.  A few words have been added in addition to this dictionary such as ‘zen’ and ‘qi’ and more words will continue to be added in the future.

Source: http://newtoy.zendesk.com