A sanctioned version of Scrabble for Facebook, released recently by video game maker Electronic Arts Inc., boasts animated graphics and true-to-the-board-game design.Underneath its flashy exterior, the new Scrabble’s features are very similar to those of its wildly popular but unauthorized competitor, Scrabulous. But Scrabulous, for now, is no longer an option on Facebook: The brothers in India who created the program suspended the word game this week after being sued by Hasbro Inc., the company that owns the North American rights to Scrabble. Scrabulous can still be played at the developers’ Web site, www.scrabulous.com.When I fired up the official Scrabble game, my first thought was: There goes my favorite office time-waster.Where Scrabulous uses text links and muted colors – giving me the illusion, at least, that my co-workers won’t notice when I’m playing – Scrabble employs rich reds and blues and sends digital replicas of the game’s iconic wooden tiles dancing across the screen.The two versions – both free – offer most of the same bells and whistles. They each have a built-in instant-messaging application, a dictionary for looking things up and a list of Scrabble’s precious elements: valid two-letter words. Scrabble’s design is more polished, though, which helped one of my opponents discover features he didn’t know existed in Scrabulous, such as an archive of completed games.Beyond the bolder, more professional look, Scrabble’s designers added cosmetic touches that set it apart from the minimalist, two-dimensional appearance of Scrabulous.The Scrabble tile rack is larger, and it’s easier to rearrange letters by dragging them with the mouse. Buttons to shuffle or alphabetize the tiles are big and easy to identify, as opposed to the tiny, unlabeled dots that serve as buttons on Scrabulous.It took several turns for me to get used to so much motion on my screen – Scrabble’s designers seemed to animate everything they could. Buttons come to life when the mouse passes over. Letter tiles sit charmingly crooked when I place them on the board, then straighten out when I click “Play.”

At best, the legit Scrabble saves time and mouse clicks, as when my opponents’ moves magically appear on screen without my having to reload the page.But sometimes the animation just slows things down. For example, Scrabble shows me how many points potential words are worth as I fiddle around. But then, when I play the word, it sends the tiles into another little jig as it totals each one’s worth. As one opponent put it, “I don’t feel like I need a rotating star to make me feel good every time I play a word.”

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