I rated Letterpress 5-Stars because it’s in the top echelon of app games. I don’t mean that it is without its design shortcomings, however. I will make the following 3 observations:(1) it’s fun, and as you play more you figure out alternative strategies to the initial attack & burrow-in approach which can be equally effective. I like the minimalism of its rules, format and operations.(2) the lexicon continues to baffle me. I still play words which are valid but disallowed. And the abundance of foreign words that are allowed are disconcerting (“zapateros” was a recent example and there are numerous Russian and Arab transliterations which are allowed).(3) I lose 10% of my games. Half of those are the result of a failure to foresee the favorable board I leave my opponent after submitting. A “preview” key would be nice but it detracts from the minimalism of the design and fosters laziness. Of the remaining 5%, half of those are bonafide words that I know and had not considered. The other half are walk-off winners which I have never heard of. Everyone has vastly different backgrounds and expertise so you can never be sure how they know these words. But archaisms and obsolete technical terms are a give away. And I bet there are a large number of players who are expert Scrabble players who routinely study word lists and unusual letter combinations.Thank you, Atebits.

I love this game, and played it all the time with my wife while we were both at work. She has since determined I’m too difficult an opponent and lost interest in playing against me, so the (presumably recent) addition of bot opponents has given the game infinite replay value, even among the antisocial types like me who would rather not play at all than be forced to play against random human opponents. Letterpress was always great, but the bot opponents now move it firmly into the realm of “my favorite mobile game of all time”. Keep being awesome, Letterpress (and maybe continue to introduce more bot archetypes over time)!

The game itself is entertaining but after virtually every turn you must endure an ad. Recently, there is a 2 to 3 second lapse after you take your turn where the screen freezes and you can’t do anything until the ad plays. A few times I’ve unknowingly tapped the x to exit during this lapse and it automatically whisks me off to the App Store. Annoying, to say the least. I contacted their tech support who claimed they’ve made no changes to the ad format. Not sure I believe that. I feel this is a money making ploy, and I’ll be honest - I hate it.UPDATE: Today, May 14, I encountered a 30-second ad after one of my turns. It was a FRANKENSTEIN RISING HOUSE OF FUN SLOTS ad. Is this what’s coming now, 30-second ads? And of course there’s no way to click out of it, so we must endure it. Horrible.UPDATE: And I got it again 10 minutes later.UPDATE: you keep claiming the ad setup hasn’t changed but I beg to differ. Instead of continually claiming that, maybe more importance and attention should be placed on what players are saying. The ad placement and/or functionality HAS changed, regardless of claims to the contrary. Ads now have a timer on 5 second them, and occasionally longer than 5. They didn’t have a timer in them until recently. The fact that you don’t understand what I mean escapes me because I tried to detail exactly what I’m experiencing.UPDATE: I keep getting this scripted “not sure what you are talking about” response from the developer.