Letterpress – Word Game

I rated Letterpress 5-Stars because it’s in the top echelon of app games. I don’t mean that it is without its design shortcomings, however. I will make the following 3 observations: (1) it’s fun, and as you play more you figure out alternative strategies to the initial attack & burrow-in approach which can be equally effective. I like the minimalism of its rules, format and operations. (2) the lexicon continues to baffle me. I still play words which are valid but disallowed. And the abundance of foreign words that are allowed are disconcerting (“zapateros” was a recent example and there are numerous Russian and Arab transliterations which are allowed). (3) I lose 10% of my games. Half of those are the result of a failure to foresee the favorable board I leave my opponent after submitting. A “preview” key would be nice but it detracts from the minimalism of the design and fosters laziness. Of the remaining 5%, half of those are bonafide words that I know and had not considered. The other half are walk-off winners which I have never heard of. Everyone has vastly different backgrounds and expertise so you can never be sure how they know these words. But archaisms and obsolete technical terms are a give away. And I bet there are a large number of players who are expert Scrabble players who routinely study word lists and unusual letter combinations. Thank you, Atebits.

Update 4.4.1 Back on track!! Thanks! Update 4.4 This latest update has a few glaring graphical glitches. On the iPhone X, everything is stretched a bit vertically and the chosen letter tiles at the top overlap with very few in place. On the iPad the top letter tiles overlap the letter counts. Please fix. Update 2.0 Excellent update. LP is finally consistent with push notifications etc. Lots of other nice details added as well. Reinstall the app if you are having server issues. Cleared up all issues for me. Thank You!! Update!! Thanks so much for working to perfect my favorite iOS game!! This is a beautiful game with a wonderful concept, but the Game Center integration is killing the experience. I have always avoided game center up until now. This awesome game by a wonderful author made me fire it up and try it without question. Unfortunately, the game constantly hangs, fails to send moves etc. Annoying as it is in it's current state, I would normally not even review it or give 1 star. Although it truly is a great game. I hope that these issues can be fixed. I actually have it on my first screen. I have never done that for any game. Please fix it! Thanks for all of your hard work!

ask user to change the rating

The game itself is entertaining but after virtually every turn you must endure an ad. Recently, there is a 2 to 3 second lapse after you take your turn where the screen freezes and you can’t do anything until the ad plays. A few times I’ve unknowingly tapped the x to exit during this lapse and it automatically whisks me off to the App Store. Annoying, to say the least. I contacted their tech support who claimed they’ve made no changes to the ad format. Not sure I believe that. I feel this is a money making ploy, and I’ll be honest - I hate it. UPDATE: Today, May 14, I encountered a 30-second ad after one of my turns. It was a FRANKENSTEIN RISING HOUSE OF FUN SLOTS ad. Is this what’s coming now, 30-second ads? And of course there’s no way to click out of it, so we must endure it. Horrible. UPDATE: And I got it again 10 minutes later. UPDATE: you keep claiming the ad setup hasn’t changed but I beg to differ. Instead of continually claiming that, maybe more importance and attention should be placed on what players are saying. The ad placement and/or functionality HAS changed, regardless of claims to the contrary. Ads now have a timer on 5 second them, and occasionally longer than 5. They didn’t have a timer in them until recently. The fact that you don’t understand what I mean escapes me because I tried to detail exactly what I’m experiencing. UPDATE: I keep getting this scripted “not sure what you are talking about” response from the developer.

I love this game, and played it all the time with my wife while we were both at work. She has since determined I’m too difficult an opponent and lost interest in playing against me, so the (presumably recent) addition of bot opponents has given the game infinite replay value, even among the antisocial types like me who would rather not play at all than be forced to play against random human opponents. Letterpress was always great, but the bot opponents now move it firmly into the realm of “my favorite mobile game of all time”. Keep being awesome, Letterpress (and maybe continue to introduce more bot archetypes over time)!

Just received an answer to my complaint (see below). You are correct that app ads do not appear when you are playing the bot, but I am still getting a popup after every online turn. If this is not supposed to happen, please tell me how to fix it. Thanks. The latest update brings me to a possible app download after every turn. So annoying! At least Spider, and other games only do that after you have won. Please consider removing this annoying "feature." I am guessing there is a pay version that does not do that, but that's kind of a mean turn after providing a very nice free version for so long. My four rating will be downgraded to two stars if this is not changed.