My name is Leslie, and I'm addicted to Chicktionary. I'm also a word geek who spends too much time working crossword puzzles, trying to solve the Jumble in the daily paper, and wastes the occasional hour here and there leafing through the dictionary, just for fun. To each his or her own, right?
Well, I'm happy to report, Chicktionary has given me a digital outlet for my word-nerdiness.
To play, you start a new game, and you're presented with seven chickens with letters on their chests. The goal is to create as many new words as possible with those letters. Points are awarded based on word length, and you can win ribbons to earn bonus points by betting that you'll be able to make at least 8 words (white ribbon), 13 words (red ribbon), or 19 words (blue ribbon) before you start the game. There are also hidden "Eggchievements" you can earn by creating certain words, though, like "easter eggs" hidden in other games and apps, you won't have any idea what they are until you hit one.
If you create a free user profile on kewlbox.com, you can challenge others online and post your scores with your profile. You can also download a Mac version of the game for free...in case you don't waste--er, spend--enough time playing on your iPhone or iPod touch.
Though we could hardly ask for more from a $2 iPhone word game, we do wish certain aspects of the interface were more intuitive. It took us too long to realize, for example, that if you start a word and need to scrap it and start over, the only way to do that is to drag the chickens out of the word box, back up to their "roost" (You can also shake the iPhone, which shuffles the letters and clears the word you've started) But we kind of expected something a little quicker and more iPhone-y, like the delete icon we're used to in the onscreen keyboard.
I only had to play for 8 hours to complete a game..so at least it's not too easy!
Shuffling the letters by shaking the phone is actually much more helpful than you might think, allowing you to see new letter combos you might have otherwise overlooked. And the "beak sneak" option, which gives you hints as to what words you can still create with the letters, was helpful, too, ultimately making the difference between completing a game and scrapping it to start over. It took about four days of play before I finally finished a game--and about that long before I won a blue ribbon (for creating 19 words in 2 minutes). But once I broke that barrier, winning seemed to come a little more easily.
After several hours of play, I noticed that the word combinations seemed a tad repetitive. The game is kind enough to always provide a couple of vowels in each 7-letter jumble, and it tells you how many words can be created with the provided letters, which helped me decide which color ribbon to try for. I also started to notice that I was forming the same few words on a regular basis--which in some cases was a bit disturbing, especially with words like "rape" and "hate."
This is a family game, people! No bad words allowed!
Gutter minds beware: Chicktionary draws the line at accepting "bad" words. I tried "shit," for example, which didn't fly, and at one point I was tempted to try the dreaded four-letter C-word, but my loathing of that word stopped me--and I'm sure the game would have rejected it anyway.
This straightforward little game offers hours of fun for word geeks--perfect for a long train or plane trip, or when you need a reason to procrastinate.
Cute graphics. Option to post scores and challenge friends on www.kewlbox.com
User interface could use a few usability tweaks
itzaferg
January 28, 2009 at 2:43pm
I went to the developers web site www.blockdot.com and they had some really cool tips for the game.
http://www.blockdot.com/iphone/
By the way, if you misspell a word, just tap on the letter you do not want and it shoots back up into the chicken. Pretty funny stuff!
1. Feeling scrambled? Shuffle the chickens by giving your iPhone or iPod Touch a firm shake to get a new perspective.
2. Get a hold of that hen house! You can click and drag the chickens to arrange them in an order that may help you find words before you start typing them out.
3. Didn't peck out the right word? Remove all eggs from the letter tray by clicking ENTER. It's a quick way to start over and you won't be penalized. Want to get rid of only one bad egg? Then tap on individual eggs to send them back to the chickens.
4. Need to take a barnyard break? Just shut down the game - your score and game progress will be saved. Just hit RESUME when prompted.
5. There's more than one way to cook your eggs: if you have a letter S, look for plural versions of the words you've already found. You can grab the egg crate above the chickens and slide it back and forth to see your word stash!
6. The Chicktionary farm is recycle-friendly: if you choose to start a new game instead of resuming a saved game, your unfinished game will be wiped clean to be played at a later date.
7. Can't hatch a word? Use the FREEBIRD option. This will fill in the first available slot in the world list above the chickens. But not the final 7-letter word.
8. Not an Egg Head? Use the green word indicator to help you find a smaller word while spelling a larger word. It lights up when the game detects a word you can submit.
9. Even after filling all the required words in the egg crates above the chickens, you can keep adding words to earn points (you just won't see the new words in the crates).
10. BEAK SNEAK will give you one letter in all the remaining words in the egg crates above the chickens. Don't like the BEAK SNEAK suggestion? You can override it with your own word.
11. The Chicktionary farm is 100% natural: no proper nouns, acronyms, or abbreviations in this game. And yes - all the words in Chicktionary are real. Look 'em up!
12. There are a lot of fun things in the game for you to explore. Those names on the scoreboard are the people who work at Blockdot. Can you knock them off the board? Play the game at different times of the day for a change of scenery. We made some EGGCHIEVEMENTS over-easy and some hard-boiled! Dig into them for more layers of game play.
