Words With Friends Gets New App for 5th Birthday

Words With Friends shot to stardom when Zynga released its Scrabble-like social game. But half a decade of yellow tiles and double words has finally given way to a major mobile update.

In celebration of the title's fifth birthday, Zynga has released the New Words With Friends app—the most significant upgrade since its 2009 launch.

Available now for iOS and Android devices, the New WWF is more than an update: it's actually an entirely separate app. Users can delete the old version and install the new one, which automatically syncs with open games and provides a wealth of new services.

'We're proud to deliver a vastly enhanced playing experience with New Words With Friends that offers the same entertaining word games players have loved for the past five years with an abundance of new features that players have asked for,' Jonathan Knight, Zynga's vice president of games, said in a statement.

Most notably, the game maker has finally added a Solo Play option, allowing everyone from word-finding newbies to Scrabble savants a private place to practice without a direct opponent—or even an Internet connection. Solo Play adjusts to your level, so while winning a game is within reach, it remains a challenge.

Those enthusiastic players whose friends have ditched the game for Candy Crush or Angry Birds can still compete, using the new Community Match service, which pits users against random opponents. Opt-in to browse stats and photos to pick your next victim, or use the Smart Match feature to eliminate the middleman.

But it's the Dictionary (pictured) and Word of the Day functions that really help New Words With Friends step up its game. Powered by Dictionary.com, users can build their vocabulary, learn the meaning of more than 170,000 words, and brush up on those all-important two- and three-letter terms.

'[P]layers now have more opportunities to play, more people to play with, and more ways to keep their minds sharp through wordy competition,' Knight said. 'Five years is an incredible achievement for the game and we went to thank all of our loyal Words With Friends players who are the reason we've reached this meaningful milestone.'

In five years, more than 58 million words and 217 billion letters have been played, scoring a whopping 1.2 trillion points—a number of them, no doubt, achieved by the person with the 9,678-game winning streak, which amounts to 172 times longer than Joe DiMaggio's historic baseball record.

Earlier this year, Zynga also released FarmVille 2: Country Escape.

The company has had a rough go of it recently, shutting down games and its Japan operations before laying off 18 percent of its staff and ditching plans for real-money gambling. But it has a new CEO at the helm: former Xbox chief Don Mattrick.