Long live Scrabulous

I heart Scrabble (see previous posts). I have also come to love Scrabulous. But it looks like my favorite Facebook application and game to play with friends named Jen might be going away!

You can read the full BusinessWeek article here, but the net-net is today Hasbro said Scrabulous violates its copyright and demanded that the social networking site take down the application immediately. Scrabulous has been around a while now, so I'm guessing Hasbro got all its legal ducks in a row before filing its IP suit and going on an anti-online game PR blitz.

After learning of the news, I quickly logged onto Facebook and at first I thought it had been taken down! Apparently I've just been working a little too much and not playing enough and my shortcut was just hidden. Enough time for me to close out my game with Nicole, but not sure the Jen games will get to see the end.

I get and respect the whole copyright/IP thing, but there are some things I'm going to miss about Scrabulous if it goes away.

1. The two-letter word dictionary. I have so many more emergency plays thanks to this tool.

2. The automatic dictionary. This thing is awesome because you have to cheat in real Scrabble to double-check words before playing them!

3. It keeps track of how many you've won over time. I usually have to do this in my head!

4. You can mix and match letters on the board for as long as you want and no one can see what you're trying to do.

5. The tiles never fall off.

6. No time limits. This is particularly appealing to me now that I am becoming more and more of a Neal everyday.

7. It does the math for you.

If I could use abbreviations, I would probably play R.I.P. next.