Parents' Guide to Words With Friends 2

This word game offers a fun, fast-moving playing experience with a variety of options to keep you engaged from round to round. This includes lightning round challenges, where you're teamed up with a random group of players; matches where you can choose to face off against bots; and games that pair you with a player who has equivalent skills. The chatting ability raises some concern: You can block users but can't disable the chat feature. There's also no way to turn off the full-screen ads that pop up fairly frequently as you play, unless you've purchased a previous version of Words With Friends. Aside from that, though, the game is well-designed, with a consistently good pace, and it provides some pretty appealing ways for players to strengthen their vocabulary, spelling, and logic skills. Players will need to come up with (and possibly readjust) a strategy to effectively place the letters they're given on the colored tiles on the board that offer extra points. They can instantly get a definition of a word they don't know by tapping on it, and can also confirm they're spelling words correctly with an in-game tool. Many of the matches offer a chance to customize difficulty level and speed; players can also test out a word and, if they decide it isn't ideal, take all the letters back and try again. Little touches like that, and the ability to shuffle the order your lettered tiles appear in at the bottom of the screen to help jog word ideas, really enhance the playing experience. In addition, to prevent games from stalling out, you're automatically resigned from a match if a random opponent doesn't make a move within five days -- another plus that should help ensure that gamers remain interested in playing Words With Friends 2 over and over again.