Word Jam is a pleasingly addictive word game in which the player finds as many words of three or more letters in a 4x4 grid of letters as possible. Anytime you find yourself with just a few minutes to play, exciting word finding action can be yours!
Using the Program
By going to Information/Preferences screen first, a player can enter his or her name and choose to play for an initial time between one and five minutes. The Information Screen also lists the top ten scores for each of the initial start times.
Once the letters have been jumbled, the player selects an initial letter, and then must choose adjacent letters (left/right, top/down, or diagonally) to that initial letter in order to spell a word of three or more letters. Once a word has been tapped out, the player can either double-tap the last letter or tap the checkmark button. If you want to abort a word, tap an already highlighted word (or, just have it checked anyways). The longer the word, the higher the score. Each word can only be used once per game, and no proper nouns or abbreviations are allowed.
Word Jam News (8/2/08)
The new version (v1.0.1) is now up on iTunes, with a new UI and larger dictionary. Let us know what you think of the new look.
Work will soon begin on v1.1, which allow continuation of an interrupted game. Currently, if your device goes to sleep the game is paused, but if you go out to make a call or open up another application, the current game is lost. Version 1.1 will save the current game state and will ask if you want to continue the game when Word Jam is relaunched.
FAQ
Q: What strategy should be used here?
A: This is slightly different than your average find-words-in-a-grid game. The main objective is to use each of the 16 positions at least once. That is how you earn bonus points, and, more importantly, add time on the clock. So, a main goal should be to use at least one "blue" letter in each word, so that all the letters will turn green. Because the corner and side letters have less opportunity for being used, I suggest trying to use them first. Lastly, because the board will change after every entered word, if a letter is currently not usable (e.g., to many surrounding consonants), try to use adjacent letters so that that letter may be re-jumbled in your favor--a needed vowel might just show up. This adds a very interesting, and I believe fun, character to the game.
Q: What dictionary does Word Jam use?
A: Word Jam uses part of the SCOWL-6 dictionary. This is a great free dictionary that comes in "levels," relating to frequency of the words (the higher the level, the less frequent the word). In order to balance size of the dictionary with having one that caught most of the words that most people would use, Word Jam comes with the "Level 55" word list, which is described as being between a medium and a large dictionary. After taking out words that cannot be made within the word list (two letter words, words with apostrophes), that leaves 70,680 words. If we get enough complaints about it not accepting certain words, we will look into increasing the dictionary in a future release. The words from the English, American, and British word lists were combined.
For the dictionary:
Copyright 2000-2004 by Kevin Atkinson
Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute and sell these word lists, the associated scripts, the output created from the scripts, and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copyright notice appears in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation. Kevin Atkinson makes no representations about the suitability of this array for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.
Q: What is the distribution of letters?
A: When jumbling letters, there are essentially 16 "word bags" that Word Jam uses to select letters for each location in the grid. Each bag holds between 5 and 7 letters. These are the 16 bags:
Bag 1: A, E, I, O, U
Bag 2: A, E, I, O, U
Bag 3: A, E, I, O, U
Bag 4: R, S, T, N, L, E
Bag 5: R, S, T, N, L, E
Bag 6: R, S, T, N, L, A
Bag 7: D, G, B, C, M, P
Bag 8: D, G, B, C, M, P
Bag 9: F, H, V, W, Y, O
Bag 10: F, H, V, W, Y, U
Bag 11: N, H, P, T, S
Bag 12: R, F, I, N, J
Bag 13: P, O T, S, R, B, C
Bag 14: D, I, R, H, T, A, K
Bag 15: L, M, T, E, R, G
Bag 16: Q, X, Z, J, K
This gives a reasonable frequency of the various letters. As you can see, a board will always have at least 3 vowels on it, and one "challenging" letter (Bag 16). We have played with the distribution and will probably continue to do so based on feedback.
Q: What is the scoring and time algorithm used?
A: For every letter above 2 in an approved word, one point is awarded. For turning all 16 letters in a level green (i.e., clearing a level), 5 bonus points are awarded. Once a level is cleared, time is added on to the clock according to the formula: Additional Time = (Original Starting Time / 2) - (15 seconds * # of last level). So, if you are playing a 3 min game and complete the first level, 90 seconds will be added to the clock. Once you complete that level, 75 seconds will be added on the clock. After the third level, 60 second. The minimum time that will be added is 30 seconds.
Q: Will there be a foreign language (that is, non-English) version?
A: Presumably there are foreign language word lists out there, so this wouldn't be too hard to do (we haven't looked for any yet though). Depending on the language, accommodation would then need to be made for letter distribution. If we get enough interest in such a version, we would attempt it.