I have had enough of the Facebook application ‘Word Challenge’. I was playing it last thursday night until after one in the morning. I had started playing just after nine… and by quarter past one, having clocked up one million points — plus another fifty thousand or so — decided that after four hours of playing the same game, I had had quite enough.

There’s no fun any more. The timer starts at two minutes, but every time you get a four letter word you get an additional two seconds; every time you get a five or six letter word, an additional three. I type fairly quickly, and I’m good at spotting words. Which means that rather than my time ticking down slowly, it’s been ticking up.

At thirty thousand points, you get the highest ‘grade’ in the game. That of anagram cyborg. Beyond this, you’re playing for points only.

Oh, and at Joe’s request, I’ve made a video of me playing word challenge (thanks again to Joe for pointing me in the direction of the appropriate video-capture stuff). I’ve only recorded about eight minutes as frankly watching someone else type in words is maybe just a little dull, but you can clearly see the game from the start, and note that at thirty-odd thousand points, I’ve got about 50% more time than I actually started with…

When I did actually make the magic million — at quarter past one in the morning — I had four minutes and twenty six seconds left, twice as much time as I had when I had started the game. At this point, and having taken four hours to pass the ‘magic million milestone’, I began to lose interest somewhat.

Yes, I could go on and keep scoring. But to what end? I don’t have any particular desire to be the first person to three million points, or five million, or ten million, simply because I have better things to do than waste my time playing Word Challenge for the twelve to forty hours it would take. (Frankly, if it wasn’t for the fact that the million mark was so tempting, ‘going to bed’ would have been a better option than spending four hours playing the damn game anyway).

So, as far as I’m concerned I’ve won. I’ve beaten the game; at this stage it simply becomes dull and time-consuming. Now does anyone have any more word games for Facebook, ideally something like Word Soup? Or for that matter, something like Fruit Frenzy?