Wordfeud

As you may know by now, I'm not that quick to jump on technological bandwagons of any kind; I was late coming to digital cameras, smartphones, Netflix, and Spotify. So it will come as no surprise that I only recently started playing Wordfeud, more than 800 days after most people discovered it (Wordfeud tells you when people started playing. It's embarrassing). Again, this was not due to lack of encouragement from my surroundings; several colleagues have been bugging me about it for the past few months, and for one new co-worker, it was one of the first questions he asked me, right after 'What is it you do here?'
So, I finally caved, created an account, and set about finding people to play with. This the fun thing about Wordfeud; in contrast to other addictive games, such as Angry Birds and CandyCrush, here you actually play against other people. Which makes it feel less like 'I'm such a loser wasting my time on games', and more of 'look at me being social and interactive'. But which also means you can lose.
Boy, did I lose, the first couple of games. Big time. We're talking 300+ points. And to make it even worse; I wasn't expecting to lose. Because most of my co-workers are beta-y types; mathematics, physics, the hard sciences. Not language-y. Not wordy. So I was expecting it to be easy.
But it isn't. Because Wordfeud is not just about thinking up the best words that will make you play the most letters, and placing these as tactically as possible on the board. It's also about strategy. About planning ahead, about thinking which TL and TW (triple letter and triple word) spaces you're giving to your opponent. About which words can easily be extended into many more points. And even (I found this unbelievable) about counting letters. About knowing which letters are still in the game, and planning ahead so you can use those letters to make a long and high-scoring word at the end, to grab the final victory. Which is not something I'm doing, I'll tell you, but you can. If you're really addicted.
So it was a steep learning curve. My first few games were a disaster; once you're behind by 100 points, it's hard to get even. But in the end, I did manage to win my first game, and from my 6 regular opponents, I've won from 3 (including my boss, which may be slightly embarrassing). But it's not about winning, it's about having fun, and coming up with crazy and inventive words, and trying out what the game will accept and what it won't, and outsmarting the person you're playing against. It has a nice chat function too, which has moved some of my conversations from WhatsApp to Wordfeud.
In the end, it's a shame I didn't discover Wordfeud earlier. But that does give me an excuse for when I lose (again); I'm still learning!