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Playing Scrabble on a computer is limited by the vocabulary the machine has to draw upon the honesty of the players involved. I can't judge the honesty but the vocabulary of this version has 11,000 words to draw upon.

This is the official version of the game, licensed by J. W. Spear and Sons, and has one main advantage over the original tile game, you can't lose the letters.

Scrabble is a game of skill and luck. The luck lies in the selection of seven letters drawn from the pool, the skill is how you combine the letters to make up a high scoring world. The words are placed on a squared board to gradually form a 'crossword' skeleton. Each new word is laced so that it creates a word in conjunction with one already on the board.

Each of the tiles has a different value, and these combine with the bonus squares on the board to create a score. The player who accumulates the highest score wins the game.

This computer version covers all the angles. There can be up to four players, either human or computer, the screen can be set for colour or monochrome sets, cheats are challenged and the individual player's titles can be hidden or shown depending on how you fell. The computer players can have a skill level set from beginner to advanced level so you are never short of an opponent.

Human players will occasionally come up with a word which the computer doesn't know. In such cases the word will be challenged and this relies on your honesty to tell the computer if the word exists or not.

As a Scrabble fanatic I was rather dubious about a computer version but this is so good that I must confess I preferred it to the board game. At least playing it this way releases you from having to calculate the scores.