Scrabble Interactive 2007 Edition

Scrabble is the word game with a 70 year-old licence that will not go away. Not that we would want it to, of course, 'cos everyone loves a game of Scrabble. Even those of us who never say much in real life beyond a monosyllabic grunt or two during waking hours all of a sudden become all erudite and erm, wordy when presented with that board and those tiles. The best thing about Scrabble on a console is its ability to throw up a variety of minigames, and Scrabble Interactive 2007 Edition is the most generous yet.

Yer original Scrabble is, of course, present and correct: you are presented with seven tiles, each with a letter and its corresponding value, and you are charged with constructing a word (a real world, mind) with as big a points value as possible. The DS version has a mode wherein you can play against a computer opponent or create or join a game with other human players, thanks to the console's WiFi facility. There are also the aforementioned minigames: Anagrams, Escaletters and Puzzletters become available as you go along. Anagrams gives you a five minute time limit in which you must find a many words as possible; in Escaletters, you must create a series of words from the available tiles. For each draw, a new letter is added to the previous word, and you have three minutes to find as many words as possible. Finally, Puzzletters is a game in which you must rearrange tiles drawn at random to create words. It will test your speed and powers of observation. It's another minigame that's against the clock, so hurry up!