We love word games. Not only do they come in all different shapes, sizes, and levels of complexity, but they make you feel clever when you play them. Even Boggle. Our best Android word games feature sets out to give you the lowdown on the best ones out there. Some are serious, some are a bit silly, all will give you the opportunity to flex your brain cells.
Best Android Word Games
On with the games!
Wordscapes
A simple and addictive mix of a wordsearch and a crossword, with a bit of Boggle sprinkled on for good measure. It might not be the most original game on the list, but it's great to jump into for a quick verbal puzzle every now and then.
Baba Is You
There might be a bit of debate on whether Baba Is You qualifies as a word game, but we're going to go with yes, if only as an excuse to talk about it. Use your skills of lateral thinking to re-arrange the words that govern the rules of the level. Baba is you. But, what if Rock is you? A ton of fun to try and solve, and even just to experiment with.
Anagraphs
Have you ever noticed that some letters look like other letters when they're upside down? Developer Christopher Cinq-Mars Jarvis sure has, and he's built an entire game around the phenomenon. Anagraphs is an ingenious and unique word game that sees you flipping letters to increase the number of words you can make.
Words for a bird
Bart Bonte is a puzzle game-designing savant who has earned legions of fans thanks to his innovative – and free-color series, including black, green, blue, red, pink, and yellow. Words for a bird is a departure, theme-wise, but this clever word game is just as creative, elegant, and original as his other titles.
Typeshift
Developed by Noodlecake, the studio that brought us the excellent SpellTower (not available on Android, alas), Typeshift is another simple word game with a killer core concept. Typeshift is an anagram puzzler, which means it challenges you to find words in a scramble of letters, but in this case the letters are arranged in neat rows. By sliding these letters up or down you can make a specific selection of words. Easy as that.
Sticky Terms
Sticky Terms arguably falls outside the definition of a word game. Each stage presents you with a jumble of shapes and tasks you with assembling them into words. It's a shape-matching game, aimed at exercising your visuospatial reasoning, but we love it anyway because the words it gets you to make are all untranslatables – i.e., terms that only exist in one language, and have no direct translation in others.
Bonza Word Puzzle
Bonza Word Puzzle is much cleverer than it sounds. This is a simple, elegant word game in which all you have to do is arrange the chunks of text on the screen to make words. It's harder than it sounds, since there are countless different configurations to eliminate. To make things easier, there's a theme in each stage. Weird name. Great game.
Boggle With Friends
When it comes right down to it, you just can't beat a bit of Boggle, the frantic board game in which you jumble up a few dice with letters on them and then race against another player to make as many words as possible.
Zynga's Boggle With Friends is exactly what you'd expect from a studio that specializes in free-to-play multiplayer experiences: a slick, fun, occasionally irritating, feature-packed smartphone version of a true classic.
Scrabble GO
Most of what we've just said about Boggle With Friends goes equally for Scrabble GO. Scopely's colorful, accessible Scrabble game arrived just in time for the first lockdowns of 2020, and helped many of us to stave off boredom, loneliness, and insanity – for a while at least.
Scrabble GO has all the modes and features you could ask for, along with all the usual energy/life/crystal stuff you've no doubt become inured to through years of free-to-play exposure. Words With Friends 2 also deserves an honorable mention.
Word Forward
The funny thing about the word game genre is that many of its games look similar at first glance. There are only so many ways you can spin the anagram, after all. But Word Forward, from Rocketship Park, is testament to the depth, originality, and variety that talented developers can sneak into an unassuming 5×5 grid of letters.
Sidewords
There's yet more innovation on display in Sidewords, a word-puzzler that presents you with a Witness-esque variety of puzzle formats to master. There are hundreds of puzzles to solve in all shapes and sizes, grouped by color so that you can play according to your mood. Arguably more logic puzzle than word game, Sidewords is nonetheless an excellent addition to any library.
Letterpress
Originally released on iOS, where it garnered an Apple award and a litany of positive reviews, Letterpress is a two-player word game that sees you playing whole words in a bid to seize territory on a 5×5 grid. It's like a letter-based take on Risk, and it conceals some seriously deep tactical gameplay behind its simple facade. Just watch this cat in action.
Words Of Wonder
A very pretty crossword game that challenges you to unlock the secrets of the wonders of the world, as well as test how expansive your vocab is.
Enjoyed our best Android word games? Maybe you'd like our best Android turn-based strategy games feature.
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