Literati is a popular word game, which can be played online at Yahoo!, usually against other people.

The Beiks version of Literati for Palm OS is a single player game and allows any words to be used on the board, including names, verb forms, singular and plural forms etc. Although the benefit of allowing word forms can be questionable, we believe it keeps the game closer to its original idea - knowing and using as many words from the language as possible.

Allowing any valid words and forms is also a big challenge to the word library that the game uses and although we have done our best to secure a truly remarkable spellchecking database, be prepared to surprise it. And when you do, you may claim yourself literati ;-)

Features

• Powered by the LexLib spellchecking engine by Beiks
• American English database with over 100,000 words and forms, normally used for spellchecking
• Two difficulty levels for beginner and advanced users
• Hall of fame with best results
• Optional UK English database (available as separate download, free of charge)
• Ability to expand with other languages (refer to Literati home page for details)
• Different graphical skins for regular (160x160) and hi-res devices (320x320)
• Different graphical skins for color and monochrome screens

Rules

The game starts with a single letter placed in the center of the playing board.

The player arranges letters in turns so that new words are assembled. A new word is a word in horizontal (left to right) or vertical (top to bottom) direction, which contains at least one "old" and one "new" letter. Old letters are all letters from the board before the start of the player's turn; new letters are the letters that the player had added.

Each turn the player is given certain amount of letters he or she can put on the board. Any amount of these can be used in the turn. Unused letters remain for the next turn while the used ones are refilled with new, random letters for the next turn.

Sometimes a special "wildcard" character (displayed as a question mark) is given to the player, which can be assigned any desired letter. The player can do that by taping the question mark and holding the pen down until a pop-up keyboard prompts for selection of a character.

By placing a letter on the board the player can often create valid new word in one direction (e.g. horizontal), but invalid in the other. This is not allowed. If a letter is added, constructing new words in both directions, then both new words must be valid!

The game continues until the board gets full or until the player is unable to construct a new word.

Scoring

Upon completing letter placement, the player requests the game to validate his or her input by taping the GO button. Each recognized word in which the new letters take place brings the player points.

The points given for a word depend on the letters that construct it, their location on the board and the location of theword itself on the board.

First, the value of each letter is determined by the color of its tile. See the onboard game help for the exact values. (the white tiles with wildcards weight 1 point.)

Second, each letter's value can be multiplied by a factor determined by the place it was placed on. Letters placed on cells marked with "2L" or "3L" (indicated with letters "L" and "W" with two or three dots on low-resolution devices) will increase their value 2 or 3 times respectively.

Third, the whole word value can similarly be multiplied by a factor if any of its new letters are placed on a call marked with "2W" or "3W" (or "W" with two or three dots on low-resolution devices). The factor will be 2 or 3 respectively.

Finally, there is an extra bonus for placing all available letters for the turn.

Version 1.71 (04/02/03, free upgrade)

• 320x480 support added. There are 2 new 320x480 skins available (standard and contrast).
• New tiles at the bottom of the playground can be rearranged by dragging them left and right. This helps forming new words without moving tiles to and from playground.
• Timed game mode added. The game can be played in more challenging mode, when a new word should be formed in up to 2 (two) minutes or the game is over.
• Options screen added - game setting separated in additional screen.
• When single letter is found, the tile is marked on the board for ease of finding.
• Fix: minor fixes in the game play (related to unnecessary showing of the "single letter found" message).
• Note: you may need to re-enter your registration code!