The Scrabble-like game for phones and tablets is extremely popular but carries its own set of rules and usable words compared to other word-based games. While not always easy to find, there are several hacks and cheats to get you to the top of the Words With Friends leaderboards in no time. Here are the best, easiest, and most-winning ways to cheat at Words With Friends.
Use Finders and Word Builders
Depending on how you define legality for this game, this is perhaps one of the least-legal ways to cheat at the game, but also one of the most effective. With word-finding services, you can plug in the letters you currently have and see which words you can create with them, including the number of points for each word and other options. Here’s how to do it:
How to Get Power-Ups on Words With Friends
There are a bunch of ways to cheat on Words With Friends that are built right into the app; for some players, this makes these options fair game since everyone has access to them. Let’s dig into all the different options. None of these will work if you don’t have any to use. You can earn power-ups by completing daily or seasonal challenges, or by exchanging coins for packs of power-ups. You can also shell out in-app purchases to buy coins, power-ups, and even get rid of ads for a while. To buy more coins, simply tap the Coins icon in the upper right corner, and you’ll be given a variety of options. Alternatively, you can tap the More icon in the lower left, then tap Store. Now that you actually know how to get them, here’s what the different power-ups do:
Swap Plus
Sure, you can swap your tiles instead of playing a turn at any time, but Swap Plus allows you to swap tiles without wasting a turn and missing out on adding any points.
Word Radar
Word Radar might be the most useful cheat in all of Words With Friends, especially when combined with the others, as Word Radar shows you exactly where you can play words.
Hindsight
Hindsight can become more of an agonizing way to torture yourself than an actual cheat. After you play a word, if you have any Hindsight power-ups and there’s a possible play on the board that would have netted you more points, you can use Hindsight to see what the highest scoring word would have been. Hindsight doesn’t take into account whether playing a stronger word would have allowed your opponent to score a Triple Word Play or any other context. It’s fun to do sometimes, other times infuriating, but not really ultimately that useful of a cheat. If you want to use it, simply look for it after you play a word. It’s the blue icon in the upper left with glasses.
Use the Word Strength Meter
The Word Strength Meter is a lot more than just a lightning bolt or a red exclamation point; it can be a true Words With Friends hack. It can provide you with both a gauge of how strong your play is, as well as give you a quick way to determine whether or not you’re building valid words. If you see a green lightning bolt, you’ve built a valid word, but if you tap the lightning bolt it will show you how strong a play it is compared to other possibilities on the board. This is often missed by players, giving you a chance to measure whether or not you can discover a higher-scoring play; again, it doesn’t take into account the possibility you’re opening up opportunities for your opponent. If you get a red exclamation mark, it’s the game telling you it’s not a valid play; but you might have the beginnings of one. Tap the exclamation mark and you’ll see if you have any valid words at all, potentially revealing new possibilities if you’re part of the way there.
Use a Dictionary
There’s some debate as to whether or not this is really cheating, but it’s hard to beat a straight-up dictionary. If you’re using a tablet version of the app, there’s a dictionary built right in. You can search any word to see if it’s valid within the app. Otherwise, you can hit up the website for Webster’s to see if you’ve found an obscure word or are spelling things correctly. It might not feel like a cheat right off the bat, but it’s another tool in the box that will net you that next win.
