Wordscraper is a
Scrabble
''Scrabble'' is a word game in which two to four players score points by placing tiles, each bearing a single letter, onto a game board divided into a 15×15 grid of squares. The tiles must form words that, in crossword fashion, read left ...
-style word game available as a
Facebook application
The Facebook Platform is the set of services, tools, and products provided by the social networking service Facebook for third-party developers to create their own applications and services that access data in Facebook.
The current Faceboo ...
. It was created by the Agarwalla brothers Rajat and Jayant, creators of
Scrabulous, and differs from Scrabble by having no fixed board design or tile distribution, instead prompting the user to choose their own.
Wordscraper was reportedly released in response to a
DMCA
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a 1998 United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or ...
action against Scrabulous by
Hasbro
Hasbro, Inc. (; a syllabic abbreviation of its original name, Hassenfeld Brothers) is an American multinational conglomerate holding company incorporated and headquartered in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Hasbro owns the trademarks and products of K ...
.
It has been online since January 2008.
Gameplay
Wordscraper allows users to create a customised board and tile set of their choice. Users choose where premium squares are placed on the board. Premium squares range from 2x to 5x letter score and 2x to 5x word score. Users can also choose the tile distribution including quantity of each letter and score for each letter. Users are free to share the rules they have created with other players.
It is not possible to recreate the copyrighted Scrabble board layout using this process, or any rough approximation of the board - attempting to do so or to use a saved Scrabble-type layout results in a "Sorry, this board is not allowed" message or in the game being automatically changed to Wordscraper Standard. These restrictions were imposed as part of a legal settlement of a case brought by Hasbro concerning copyright of the Scrabble game.
[http://www.lexulous.com/press.php]
References
{{reflist
External links
Wordscraper application on facebook
2008 video games
Scrabble variants
Scrabble software
Multiplayer online games