by Greg Schwartz

Created on: November 08, 2009

Yahoo! offers a wide variety of free online games, most of which can be played with multiple players. The games only require a Yahoo! account and a short download time, and they can provide hours of fun.

Word Racer is one of these games. It is available online, and can be played in various rooms with people all over the world. You can set up your own table where you can make the rules, decide who can sit at your table, and boot people if you want.

Word Racer is very similar to the popular game Boggle in gameplay. A random group of letters appears on the screen, and you get points for connecting the letters into words. The more words you get and the longer your words are, the more points you get. Whoever at the table has the most points after four rounds wins.

Vocabulary buffs and those who like word games will probably enjoy Word Racer. If you have two or more people with separate computers in the same home or office, Word Racer is a fun game to play against each other.

There are a few differences between Word Racer and Boggle. One difference is that in Boggle, you can use the same letter twice in the same word, as long as you use another letter in between it. For example, to make the word "POP," you can use a P, the O next to it, and then the same P. You can't go back to the same letter in Word Racer.

Another difference is the use of special letters in Word Racer. During the latter rounds, certain letters (designated by a different color) are worth more points. So if you make the word "UP" using a U and the specially-colored P, you might get 30 points instead of the usual 10.

As with most Yahoo! online games, Word Racer is played at a table in one of the many game rooms. You can hold conversations with other players, either at the table or in the game room, and you can have both public and private conversations. You can also view other players' profiles and ratings, and if you are the host of a table, you can invite anyone in the room to play.

When you create a Word Racer table, you can customize it by changing a few rules. You can decide whether or not you want the game to be rated (unrated games do not count against your rating), whether you want it to be fast-paced (less time in between the rounds), and whether you want to use strict scoring (negative points for incorrect or misspelled words). You can also choose to make your table private, so that only people that you invite can sit and play. (As a default, all rooms are public when created.)

Anyone with a Yahoo! account and a capable web browser can play Word Racer. If you do not have a Yahoo! account, they are free to get and easy to set up - just visit Yahoo.com. Once you log in and access the Word Racer page, there is just a quick download to install, and then you're ready to play.

Learn more about this author, Greg Schwartz.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.