Crossways, a Scrabble-Style Word Game
Crossways is a Scrabble-style crossword tile game on a fifteen-by-fifteen board, played in the browser and built for a phone. Play it by mail: take your turn, put the phone down, and come back when your list says it is your turn again. Or play the computer, or pass one device around.
How to play
Each player holds seven tiles from a bag of 100. Tap an empty square to set the cursor, tap it again to turn the line down instead of across, then tap tiles in your rack, or type, to lay letters along the line. Letters already on the board are skipped. Tap a laid tile to take it back.
The first word must cover the center star. Using all seven tiles in one turn earns 50 extra points, and a blank can stand for any letter but scores nothing. You can also swap tiles, pass or resign.
The game ends when someone plays out their last tile with the bag empty, or after six scoreless turns in a row.
Playing a friend by mail
PLAY starts an online game and gives you a four-letter code to send. Your friend types it in and taps JOIN A GAME. There is no password and no account, just a name of two to twenty letters or digits, and that name is how the game finds your games again.
Your games are listed on the menu with the score and whose turn it is. Nothing pings you. Come back when you like, and while you watch the other player think, the page checks for their move every twenty seconds.
What's different here
Your rack is secret, so the online game is dealt by a server that keeps the bag and the move history and shows each player only their own tiles.
The score for a word shows before you commit it, worked out by the same rules the server uses to accept the move, so the number you see is the number you get. A word the dictionary does not know is flagged before you play it.
The dictionary is ENABLE, a public-domain word list, plus a short list of additions: 168,572 words in all.
Playing against the computer
Three opponents. EASY plays like a tired relative, picking from the lower-scoring half of its options. FAIR plays like a decent club player, good but not ruthless. SHARP takes the best score it can see, every time.
The computer goes through the same legality check as you, so it cannot make a move you could not. PASS & PLAY deals a game on one device with nobody else online, and an unfinished game on this device can be resumed from the menu.