5 Things – Words With Friends

The people that I met on Words With Friends were fascinating.

I began playing Words With Friends a few months back on the recommendation of my esteemed colleague, Adventuro, who deserves full credit for this adventure.

Words With Friends is basically an app to play scrabble. I didn’t know all of the bonus features that were included. But I would learn them soon enough. The games were fine for the first while . I learned some new words, won some games, lost some games. It was good.

Then it got weird.

1.Words With Friends as a Chatting App

The first bonus feature I discovered was the chat function. For a while, I noticed a number in the upper right corner of the screen. I eventually figured out that this indicated a chat message. At first, there were a couple of “Hellos” and “Good play” messages from active games. My opponent was always unknown to me, except for a couple of teacher colleagues that know IRL.

Was the player who regularly scores 40+ points per hand REALLY a retired teacher who loves quilting and has an amazing vocabulary of little-used six and seven letter words? They seemed legit and just there to play, like I was. But not everyone was.

There was this next guy from Florida who was an oil mud engineer. I don’t know what that is. I don’t think he was 100% into scrabble because when I didn’t share my life story…Florida stopped playing.

Game over.

The next feature I learned was …

2. Words With Friends as a Christian Outreach App

A dude from Texas introduced himself after five or six moves and asked if I was a Christian. I reviewed my recent plays to see what could have tipped him off. He must have been playing a hunch because it was definitely not obvious from the choice of words I played.

NOTE TO FATHER MICHAEL – Nor was it obvious from my words that I was NOT a Christian.

I told Texas “yes”. He asked me which person in my profile picture I was. When I told him, he stopped playing.

Game over.

Another little known feature of WWF is…

3. Words With Friends as an Investment App

After 5 or 6 plays, California introduced himself as a forex trader. According to California, a $300 investment can grow to $3500 in 3 days! HELLO RETIREMENT!!!!!

I proposed that he loan me the $300 and I would repay him in 3 days when I cashed out. He wasn’t excited about fronting me the seed money.

Game over.

SIDE NOTE – the other day someone on The Twitter DM’ed me about an incredible investment opportunity in AI. Apparently they earned $12000 the other day by doing ‘nothing’. Mr. Austerberry, my high school physics teacher would say that it is impossible to get something for nothing – there is no free lunch.

The next feature I discovered was…

4. Words With Friends as a Dating App

The next category of messages seemed to come from more international locations. I started getting the following series of messages. The sequence was very formulaic. It began with:

Hello.

Where are you playing from?

That’s a beautiful city.

I’m really busy and don’t have time here. Give me your email address and we can share pictures on Hangouts.

My standard reply was that I’m just playing to learn words and stave off dementia, which received the terse reply:

OK Bye since you don’t want to be friends.

Game over.

Probably the best feature that I discovered was…

5. Words With Friends as a Deleted App