Playing a turn

Using the rack
Placing tiles
Removing placed tiles
Looking up the dictionary
Finishing your turn
Trading and passing
Blanks
What is that blank?
Popup tiles
The Last button

Taking your turn involves either placing some of your tiles on the board to form one or more words, or trading some, all or none of your tiles.

Using the rack

You can rearrange the tiles in your rack by simply dragging them to another position in the rack. Note that the most recently dragged or tapped tile becomes the selected tile.

The rack can be hidden or shown by pressing the Hide/Show button. This can be useful if you need to show your opponent the board but don't want them to see your tiles.

(In a normally multi-player (human) game, the rack is hidden after every turn to prevent your opponents from seeing your tiles accidentally.)

Placing tiles

Tiles are placed onto the board from the rack one at a time. The placed tile is always the selected tile.

There are two ways to place your tiles:

The easiest way is to rearrange your tiles to make a word. Then make sure the first tile in the word is selected (just tap it). Now tap squares on the board one at a time. Notice that the selected tile is placed on the board and the tile to the right becomes the selected tile.
The other way is to drag tiles from the rack onto the appropriate square on the board.

Here is the result of placing a word onto the board.

Notice that the letters of the word are highlighted indicating that they are newly placed tiles and the value of this word is shown under Value.

Removing placed tiles

To remove tiles which you have placed, simply tap the square on the board. The tile will be returned to your rack.

A quick way to return all placed tiles to your rack is to press the Undo button.

Looking up the dictionary

If you have the dictionary installed and are playing in friendly mode, you can check your newly placed word(s) in the dictionary. Press the Score button.

Each formed word is shown along with its score, and whether it is in the dictionary.

If you are playing in tournament mode, or if the dictionary is not installed, you can still check the score for each word, but the dictionary will not be consulted.

Finishing your turn

When you are happy with your word(s), press the Done button to finish your turn and proceed to the next player.

In tournament mode, if there are no computer players, your opponent is given the opportunity to either accept or challenge your turn.
In this case, pressing the Done button brings up two further options, Accept and Challenge.

At this point play has actually passed to the next player, who must then either accept the word or challenge it.
If you are happy with the word, press Accept and play continues just as in friendly mode.

If you wish to challenge the turn, press Challenge. You will be presented with the following screen.
(Note. If there is a computer player, the preceding screen is bypassed since the computer will automatically challenge words which are not in the dictionary).

Here the dictionary is consulted (if available) and we see that the word is actually valid. If the dictionary had not been available, a question mark would be shown and you would have to look up the word yourself. This is also true for words which are longer than 8 letters.

If you accept the word(s), press Accept (as we would in this case), which means that the challenge failed and the challenger loses their turn.

If the word(s) are invalid, press Reject to reject the placed word, which means that the placed tiles are removed and the placer loses their turn.

If you are playing the computer in friendly mode, rejecting the words does not cause you to lose your turn. You are simply returned to the main screen and given the opportunity to change your word.

Trading and Passing

As an alternative to placing tiles, you may choose to trade some, all or none of your tiles instead by pressing the Trade button. (Note that when there are less than 7 tiles remaining in the bag, you may no longer trade, you may only pass. When this happens the button will change to Pass)

Select the tiles you wish to trade by touching them. The tiles which will be traded are highlighted.

Select no tiles if you wish to simply pass.

Press OK to trade the selected tiles, or press All to trade all your tiles. Play passes to the next player.

Blanks

There are two blanks tiles in the bag. These can be used as any letter, and thus when you play a blank, you need to indicate which letter it represents.
Place a blank letter on the board as you would any other letter.

When the letter for the blank is required, you will be prompted to enter it. (i.e. When you press either Score or Done.)

Enter the letter corresponding to the blank. Once the turn finishes, the blank behaves exactly like any normal tile.
(Note that if you have placed two blanks in one turn, you will be asked to enter the letters for both blanks. The order is left to right and top to bottom).

What is that blank?

In order to determine what letter corresponds to a given blank, the tile popup feature can be used. Simply touch onto a previously placed blank tile as shown.

The popup feature is described in more detail below.

Popup tiles

The tile popup feature has a number of uses:

Seeing the value of tiles once they have been placed on the board (since they are too small otherwise)
Looking "under" placed tiles to see if any bonus squares were used.
Seeing the letter which a blank tile represents.

Simply touch any previously placed tile on the board to popup a large version of the tile. Notice also that any bonus under the tile is shown in the title bar.

In order to differentiate between the popup function and placing/unplacing tiles there are two ways to popup on newly placed tiles.

First popup a previously placed tile and, while still touching the board, move over the new tiles.
Hide your tiles before touching the new tiles.

The Last button

Especially towards the end of the game, it can be difficult to see where the last player placed their word.
While the Last button is pressed, the tiles placed by the previous player are highlighted, along with the score for that turn.