Once the game begins, you place your tiles by first tapping the letter you want to use and then tapping the space you'd like it to go on the board. Alternatively, you can simply drag-and-drop the letter. When you're satisfied with your move, tap Done to move on to the next player.

Several other options exist as well, however. You can tap Show to display your tiles and Hide to hide them from your opponent's view. You can tap Undo to remove your tiles from the board and start your turn again, and you can tap Trade to trade all or some of your tiles. Tap Score to view the current scores, and tap Last to see what the last word placed was.

Playing the game
In using the game, I can report that the folks at Handmark have done an excellent job at transforming the Scrabble board game into a Palm OS computer game. The layout is excellent, and game-play is intuitive. My only qualm with the game is that I keep losing. I set it on the novice level (only one step up from beginner), and my computer opponent solidly whomps me with questionable words like "emulous," "teasel," and "ye." Not to mention its use of abbreviations, such as "PA," "Re," and "OS," which I thought were illegal. But I only kid my electronic foe. It was a good game, though I was a little suspicious of the random letter selection when the computer just happened to have the right letters to spell "whiner." Damn smart-alec computers.

My personal shortcomings in Scrabble aside, I highly recommend this game. As games go, it's far more intellectually challenging than most, so you don't have to feel as guilty spending a few hours on it. After all, it's a great vocabulary builder. Now I know that a teasel is a plant of the genus Dipsacus, of which one species bears a large flower head covered with stiff, prickly, hooked bracts that, when dried, can be used for raising a nap on woolen cloth.

Well, it's time to go another round against the computer. I'm feeling particularly emulous.

Bob Freud is an active Palm enthusiast and teaches at Bergen Community College. He can be reached via email at rfreud@bergen.edu.