Gamertell

EA is ready to wipe your Scrabble clone-playin’ guilt away with a legit, free version of the tabletop classic for Facebook. The videogame megapublisher has the official Hasbro board game available on Pogo right now and it will be available on social networking site Facebook later this month.

What really jumps out of the Pogo version is the more authentic replication of the traditional board and tiles although it’s a little harder on the eyes than the ultra-clean Scrabulous setup. The dictionary defaults to Meriam-Webster, which should cut down on some of the nonsense words that Dictionary.com came up with.

The Facebook version promises the same word lists and dynamic chat offered on the Pogo version. It will also allow players to take as much time as they want between turns, the very feature that made Scrabulous so practical and, sometimes, so frustrating. I guess the real question is will people switch from the clone, which set up shop far earlier, or the real deal, coming to the market way late with similar features?

Site [Pogo] Product Page [Scrapulous] Read [Star Telegram]