The trouble with Bookworm is that you get to a stage where it’s throwing hard-to-use letters at you, meaning you’re eking out puny words and can hardly ever make good ones. That’s just not as fun as the early stages. On top of this, it only makes it harder to make good words, not survive, as the red tiles are never a real threat if you’re careful and plan ahead as soon as they arrive.

It all adds up to a deeply flawed, even broken, game… but one that still, somehow, keeps you playing.

I’ll never understand it.

It keeps tracks of statistics, which you can view by turning the phone on its side. Magic, I think. Now, being a giant nerd – I keep a blog about which video games I play – I like statistics a lot. So this pleases me. Now I can see how rubbish I am any time I want.

There’s also a “gotta catch ‘em all” aspect, where certain words add to collections. For example, if you make YELLOW, that will be added to your Colours collection. A neat little feature.

Both of these things may have been in the full PC version, but I’ve only played the ad-supported web game. Anyway, they’re nice, but given the lack of time I put into this game over the weekend, not enough on their own to make me play.

And, yes, it does save your game when you quit out of the app. This is a good thing, because games of Bookworm never end. Seriously, the game never gets very difficult and you never actually lose a game on the PC version, you just have to close your browser after playing the same game for several weeks. It’s possible that the iPhone game might be rebalanced, of course. I guess I’ll find out… eventually.

On the level I’ve just reached, the enemies seem to be able to do the “infinite damage in a single turn” thing, which is very annoying. Won’t stop me playing, though, as the game is excellent.

See, I’ve always liked the original Bookworm, but it goes on forever, because there’s no real danger if you’re being careful. Bookworm Adventures puts a structure around the game and changes some rules. You’ve got a much smaller grid, letters you’re using don’t have to be adjacent to each other, you have special power-up gems and, most importantly, you use your words to damage enemies. The better the word, the more damage you cause. Add a silly story around all this and some mini games (some of which are ace, some of which… aren’t) and you’ve got a game which is much better than the original.

Still, it’s no match for Peggle, despite what some reviewers would have you believe. And talking of Peggle…

Why do the PopCap word games have such stupid rules on what words are allowed? The two word games I’ve tried – Bookworm and Bonnie’s Bookstore – use different dictionaries, but they’re united by not allowing rude words.

So I’m playing Bookworm and I can’t have CUNT. Why? Because it’s offensive, presumably. (It’s taboo but it’s not slang, according to Chambers.) But , you know, I’m the one making it. I can understand them making sure it doesn’t come up as a game-generated word you have to make for bonus points, but it’s still a real word that should be allowed, damn it!

And moving on over to Bonnie’s Bookstore, I find ORGY is disallowed. Eh? What? Orgy? Actually, that was a case where it refused to use a wildcard tile as the R. I guess it’s got ORGY down as an “offensive” word to not bring up in those situations. Be interesting to see if I would be allowed it if I could make it without wildcards, actually. But still, ORGY seems a pretty normal word to me.

And it doesn’t do British English. That’s the only reason I can think of for not allowing PONCE, anyway. I guess it just can’t be an American word, or something. Well, I suppose it is kind of slang, but still, I should be allowed it.

Because I say so, that’s why!

Also:

Now allowing that could have meant I lost the game and everything! (As it happens I didn’t – I won on the very last turn – but still…)

I mean, I’d still love to see Bookworm or Bonnie’s Bookstore on the Xbox Live Arcade, but only with bigger dictionaries that allowed all real words, whether offensive or not.

At least it let me have PENIS. It would have been very odd if that hadn’t been allowed.