HOW TO SHARE A WORD BLITZ TOURNAMENT TO A GROUP

 Word Blitz, the popular Boggle-clone word game, has yet more "improvements" that make sharing a tournament game to a group even more difficult.  There are slightly different versions of Word Blitz, the one I am discussing is played via Facebook.  First some background:

At its basic level, you play Word Blitz against a friend.  Next up, you somehow hook up to a non-friend.  The two of you play three rounds of the game and whoever have the most points win.  As surprising as it sounds, sometimes you cannot find opponents to play against.  Again, I am talking about the Facebook version, where games are limited by the friends or non-friends you have who also play the game.  There is also another outlet, The League, where you can usually play up to six single-round games, one at a time, against a random player.  Personally, I think it is great that the game doesn't make it too easy to play all the time.  Smartphone users in general already spend too much time playing games.  But then again there is the Tournament option.

With Tournaments, you can play against a wider range of players.  You have up to seven days to try again and again with different board configurations, not of your own choosing, to get the best score you can.  There is a limit of seven tournaments you can join at any given time.  Still, having seven games over seven days is still a lot of play time.  Alas, the issue again is finding people who would join the tournament games you created, which by default only appears on your own timeline.  So you need friends who would join.  I am somewhat selective these days and try not to have new Facebook friends unless I already know them in person.  Or have a need for it, like teachers at my old high school, since I run an active alumni group.  Others may have other reasons not to friend people on Facebook.  This is where Facebook groups created solely for sharing Word Blitz tournament games come in.  One such group is the Word Blitz Tournaments Center, located at https://www.facebook.com/groups/435605317529797 .  I am a member of the group and a frequent question is "How do I share to the group?"  I hope the instruction below will help.  The instruction is for an iPhone user in the U.S.A.  In future posts, I can make another for Apple MacOS or Microsoft Windows.  Go join the group before you follow the instruction.

Recall that I mentioned there are changes to the game that makes sharing tournaments more difficult?  It used to be you can create an almost limitless number of tournaments while participating in only seven or fewer.  Maybe some or many tournaments ended up with no participants or maybe the many number of tournaments somehow cost Lotum, the distributor of Word Blitz, too much money.  The new rule is you have to be in a tournament game else nobody can join it.  You still cannot play more than seven games simultaneously so create tournament games only when you have fewer than seven games going.  If you already play seven games and try to create a tournament, you will get some unhelpful error message.  No, it does not tell you that you already have seven games active and that you must be in a new tournament game that you create.

On with the instruction!

At some random schedule, there is a podium icon that sorta reads Create Tournament, as circled in green.  Note the partly hidden Invite button on the far right of that row.  It may be necessary to scroll sideway to bring the podium icon into view.  Click Create and you will be on your way to creating a tournament.

Be sure to click the line below your name to have it show Public.  If it is left on Friends Only then group members who are your friends cannot play.  Next click the Share button near the bottom then don't do anything for a few seconds.  If you have fewer seven games going, in a few seconds a new game will start.  Give it your best, if you wish, to get some high score then leave Word Blitz altogether.

Click the Menu icon in the lower right then scroll to the top and click See Your Profile.  Try to do this as soon as you quit Word Blitz in the above step, before your timeline have other new stuff.

The new tournament game you created and shared to your timeline should be easy to find.  Click on its Share button.  Note the score of only one point.  If I played some words before, my score would be higher.  In this case, I didn't play any words.

Click Share To A Group (I used title-case to make the instruction easier to follow.  I am aware the actual title for link is slightly different).

You should already be a member of the group called Word Blitz Tournaments Center.  In the screenshot, next to the magnifying glass, I typed to and the list of groups shortened to just two items.  I clicked on the lower choice.

At last we come to the final step to sharing a tournament game to a group.  Note that near the top of the screen the group name is shown.  I strongly recommend entering some info to make your game different than the many others that are shared to the group.  Of great use is the day of the week.  Recall that games last seven days.  Some people like to join games that end soon, so that they don't have to wait a week to join a new game.  For example, if you join seven games that were started on a Sunday, you can only play those seven games and cannot join any new ones.  When you include the info, i.e. day of the week, in your posts, people can search for the word Sunday, or whatever the case, and join only those games.  Finally, click Share Now and your game will be shared to the group for all to enjoy.

WORD BLITZ - PLAY WITH NON-FRIENDS

My current favorite word game is Word Blitz by Lotum, usually played through Facebook's relatively new game engine.  It's basically a Boggle clone, i.e. you have a grid of letters to work with, connect the letters to form words in the allocated two minutes, in a race against an opponent.  Like most word games, the words you form don't necessarily have useful daily usage, but rather it depends on the letters' assigned points, not unlike Scrabble.

One strange thing with the Facebook version is that you don't get to randomly play against opponents, not easily anyway.  You either drag many of your friends into the fray or earn some Hearts, whether through a timing system or by watching video ads, so that you can play in a tournament.  I suppose that's how they primarily make money, eyeballs supposedly exposed to advertisements.  While the game is popular, many people have a hard time convincing friends to play the game.  Waiting around to have enough Hearts to be able to enter a tournament is a pain.  A popular request in some Facebook groups for players of Word Blitz is that they need friends to play with.  There is no obvious way to play with people who are not already a friend in the Facebook world.  But it is true that you don't need to be a friend of someone to be able to challenge them to a game.

The trick is you first need to make a connection with a player via Facebook Messenger, which is the messaging system in the Facebook ecosystem.  Anyone can send a private message to anyone via Messenger, unless one party doesn't like the other and already blocked them.  When you see someone say, "I need someone to play me!", go to their profile and send them a message, something like "Let us play Word Blitz!"

Next launch Word Blitz and scroll down the Leaderboard, all the way down to the bottom of the list to find the Invite entry.  In the screenshot below, I scrawled over people I am friend with to give them some privacy.  Click on the plus sign next to Invite.

Scroll a bit down to find the list of people who you recently exchanged messages in Messenger.  It can be a friend or in this case, the non-friend that you just verbally challenged to a game.  That challenge of course was nothing more than to establish a link, so that that person would show up in the list after you clicked the plus sign in the screen before.  Click Play.

That's it!  That's how you can play people who are not friends with you on Facebook.  Personally, I do this from time to time.  People would send me friend request for the sole purpose of having an opponent.  It is so unnecessary once you know this way.  Not straightforward, but it works.  I'd rather just play someone this way instead of having to see people's posts in my feed.

Merry Wordscraper Christmas

Merry

Christmas

to

my

Wordscraper

friends

on

Facebook

Check out the game at http://apps.facebook.com/wordscraper .

If you find waiting for your turn unbearable, play some "word games"in the forum.

My favorite forum games are "Sleepless in Seattle etc" and 

"Quite Witty Even Reasonable Typewriter Yack"

Geographic Word Links?

A niece of mine, who we shall call JC, likes to play with me a version of what I described in the last post as Word Links. Instead of regular words, however, we would use names geographic locations. Continents, nations, cities, mountains, rivers, and so on. It is nice that a kid actually likes geography, what with so many adults, not just kids, in the U.S.A. so ignorant of world geography. I am a tad above average myself with geography so I can use a lesson or two on the topic. It is not enough to utter the geographic words but also say something about them, how the places are important enough to be known. Hey, a little history is good to know, too.

Like the regular Word Links games, certain letters appear often at the end of these "words". I think most annoying is the letter "A". You have ASIA, AUSTRALIA, AFRICA, AMERICA, ANGOLA, and so on. You can spend the whole game using only words that end and start with the letter "A" - no fun at all. The letter "Y" also comes up often at the end of word, although there are not that many geo-words that start with it. "K" is another letter that behaves like "Y". If my memory serves me right, "E" and "N" geo-words are hard to come by, too.

In the spirit of making the Geo Word Links game better, I've created the following list of words with some info about them. Most info comes from Wikipedia, others from an ancient (1982) Compton's Encyclopedia I rescued off the street some years ago, and some just whatever came to my head, including attempts at humor. Feel free to chime in with suggestions or correction of facts. Enjoy!

Name Remark Amsterdam Capital city of the Netherlands. Anchorage The largest city in Alaska. Annapolis Capital city of Maryland. Antietam Part of Virginia, site of the bloodiest, single-day battle of the American Civil War. Arlington Part of Virginia, best known for the Arlington National Cemetery. Edinburgh Capital city of Scotland. Egypt A country in north Africa, home to the Sphinx and Pyramids. Elizabeth Port city of New Jersey, home to Ikea and Jersey Garden Mall. Estonia A country in Northern Europe. At the end of World War II, as the Russian Army advanced toward Germany, it took over Estonia and nearby countries. It was not until 1991 that Estonia became an independent country again. Ethiopia A country in Africa. In the 1980s, Ethiopia was the victim of famines. The Supergroup USA for Africa raised money for Ethiopia and similar victims with its song "We Are the World". Everglades A vast area of land and water in southern Florida, by now (2010) probably taken over by golf courses and time-share condos. Kathmandu Capital city of Nepal. Keyna A nation in Africa popularly known for having top winners in the New York City Marathon. Khe Sanh A city in the former South Viet Nam. The U.S. had an army base there and, as a show of force, the North Vietnamese Army laid siege to the base, but was unsuccessful at capturing it. Kilimanjaro The highest mountain in Africa. Knoxville The third largest city of Tennessee (U.S. state) Komodo An island in Indonesia once used as an exile prison, now best known for its komodo dragon, a large, ferocious lizard. Kosovo A region in Serbia that has been trying to gain independence from Serbia. Kyoto A city in Japan where the Kyoto Protocol was adopted. The Protocol's aim was to fight global warming. The Protocol was ratified by many nations in the world, with the U.S. the sole country with no plan in accepting it.

Nairobi Capital city of Kenya. Nepal A small country between India and China, home to Mount Everest and The Himalayas. Nevada U.S. state perhaps best known for its Las Vegas city. New Brunswick A province in Canada, home to the Bay of Fundy and other natural wonders. Niger A landlocked country in Eastern Africa, not to be confused with Nigeria. Norway A country in Northern Europe, home of the Vikings. Nuremberg German city known for the trial of Nazi leaders charged with crimes against humanity. Yonkers The fourth most populous city in New York State. Just north of New York City, Yonkers is so confusing to New Yorkers that a play called "Lost in Yonkers" was written about the experience. Wink, wink. Yorktown Village in Virginia (U.S. state) that is best known as the site of the last battle of the U.S. Revolutionary War. Ypres A city in Belgium that was fought over by the two sides of World War I. All together there were three Battles of Ypres. During the Second Battle of Ypres, poison gas was used by the Germans, for the first time on the Western Front. Yucatan A peninsula in Mexico. Yugoslavia A former country in Eastern Europe that was made up of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, and other countries.