Play on Your Schedule: Introducing Correspondence Mode and Competitive Leagues

The best crossword board game should fit into your life - not the other way around. Today we’re announcing two features that fundamentally change how competitive OMGWords can be played: correspondence mode for asynchronous gameplay, and a new competitive league system honoring the legacy of Elliott Manley and his pioneering PlayScrab platform.

Part 1: Correspondence Mode - Finally, Competitive Play Without the Time Pressure

Real-time games are exhilarating, especially those fast ultra-blitz ones. They’re also demanding. You often need up to 30-60 minutes of uninterrupted focus, your opponent needs to be online simultaneously, and if either of you has kids, pets, jobs, or any form of human responsibility, scheduling can become a logistical nightmare.

Correspondence mode solves this. It’s the same competitive OMGWords you know, just spread across hours or days instead of minutes. Imagine postal chess, only without the stamps and long delays.

How It Works

Seeking a correspondence game works almost identically to seeking a real-time game. The key differences:

• Time controls are measured in days, not minutes. The default correspondence game gives you 5 days per turn. No time bank, no emergency reserve - just a generous window to make your move when life allows.
• Matching is asynchronous. Your seek sits in the lobby until someone accepts, which could be seconds or hours later. No pressure. You can also send a direct match request to another person, or even a bot.
• Games can span weeks. A single game might take several weeks to complete. That’s the point.

The Correspondence Lobby Tab

Your active correspondence games live in their own dedicated tab in the lobby. It goes beyond aesthetics, giving you a clearer view of what needs attention.

• Turn indicators show at a glance which games need your attention. A small badge displays how many games are waiting for your move. (See the red 1 in the correspondende tab above)
• Games are sorted intelligently: Your turn first, then by time remaining. The game where you have 1 day left appears above the one where you have 4 days left.
• Recently completed games appear below your active games, so you can review that brilliant endgame you just finished or analyze where things went sideways. Note that Woogles has a free analyzer.

When it’s your turn and time is running short, you’ll see a red clock icon. This is your browser’s polite way of saying “you might want to get on this.” With 5 days per turn, you have plenty of breathing room, but when you’re down to hours, the interface makes it clear.

Why This Matters

Correspondence mode is a different competitive experience. Without time pressure, you can:

• Actually think through the strategy of that situation instead of panic-playing the first bingo you see. Although, this can bite you a bit. I spent like 20 minutes on a lost endgame once while lying in bed on my phone 😅
• Play strong opponents across time zones. Your 11pm is their 7am. Doesn’t matter.
• Maintain an active competitive life even with an unpredictable schedule. Parent of two young cuties? Night shift worker? Neurosurgery resident taking a break in between brains? You can still play serious OMGWords.

Part 2: Competitive Leagues - Honoring Elliott Manley’s Vision

In the 2010s Elliott Manley launched Facebook Scrabble leagues and then playscrab, a correspondence-based competitive league system for Scrabble. It was brilliant: skill-based divisions, seasonal play, promotion and relegation, and a structure that made competitive word gaming accessible to people who couldn’t commit to weekend-long tournaments.

Elliott sadly passed away in 2022, but his vision for accessible competitive play continues. We’re launching Woogles Leagues in his memory, building on the foundation he pioneered.

What Are Leagues?

Leagues are seasonal correspondence competitions with promotion and relegation between skill-based divisions. Here’s how it works:

• Seasons last 2-3 weeks and consist of roughly 14 games (everyone plays everyone in their division).
• Divisions are skill-stratified. New players start in lower divisions. Strong players rise to Division 1. Mid-tier players compete against similarly skilled opponents.
• Top performers get promoted to higher divisions. Bottom performers get relegated. Everyone else stays put for the next season.
• There’s an overall league winner each season - the champion of Division 1.

Unlike tournaments where you might face wildly mismatched opponents, leagues ensure you’re almost always playing someone close to your skill level. This makes every game competitive and educational. The chance to work your way up the leagues over time is a great motivator to continue studying.

How to Sign Up

Before the next season begins, leagues open for registration. Here’s the current process:

1. Request an invite in the league chat. We’re using an invite system initially to ensure new players understand the commitment. This may change as the system matures. We have a few League Promoters who can invite you to the league.
2. Review the requirements carefully. This isn’t casual play - you’re committing to finishing ~14 games in 2-3 weeks.
3. Register for the specific season. You’re not auto-enrolled in future seasons. This gives you control over when you participate.

We may remove the invite system in the future once we’re confident players understand what they’re signing up for, but for now it ensures everyone enters with clear expectations.

The Requirements: What You’re Actually Committing To

Let’s be explicit about this, because league forfeits create a bad experience for everyone involved.

Time Commitment:

Leagues use much tighter time controls than casual correspondence games. Instead of the standard 5-day default, league games typically require:

• ~14 games over 2-3 weeks
• 6-8 hours per turn (varies by league settings)
• 48-96 hour time bank as an emergency buffer

This is where the time bank system becomes crucial. The time bank is your safety net for when meetings run long or your toddler discovers permanent markers. When you run out of time on your main clock, you start drawing from the time bank. You’ll see a green hourglass icon with a “USING TIME BANK” indicator.

The above picture shows the beginning of a game; both players have 8 hours on their clock, with a multi-day time bank. You can see the value of the time bank at any time by hovering on the hourglass icon. Note that the time bank does not get replenished at this time, but the time per turn always resets back to 8 hours once your turn is over.

Once you run out of time for your regular turn, your scorecard widget will turn yellow and you will see a “USING TIME BANK” indicator. The time displayed is how much time is left in your time bank. In the example above, this player’s time bank only has 8 hours and 37 minutes left. Hopefully they’ll be done with their game soon!

If your time bank runs out, you forfeit the game. Period.

The time bank is sort of an emergency reserve. League play demands consistent attention. With 14 concurrent games, each requiring a move every 6-8 hours, you’re often looking at checking in 2-3 times per day. Leagues are structured competitive play.

With that said, the time bank provides enough buffer that you can skip checking your games for a day here and there if needed.

Fair Play:

• Rated games with no external assistance
• No engine use, no consulting word lists mid-game, no asking friends “is ZANJERO good?”
• Our anti-cheat algorithms will catch you. They’re quite good. Violations result in suspension from leagues and from Woogles entirely.

We’re not trying to be draconian here. We’re trying to maintain competitive integrity and respect for your opponents’ time. If you can’t commit to finishing your games, please don’t sign up. There’s no shame in sitting out a season, but please don’t ghost your division. 👻

League Features: The /leagues Page

The league page is your competitive hub. It’s organized into three columns:

Left column: League chat. Real-time discussion with other league members. Ask questions, discuss games, engage in friendly trash talk.

Center column: Season navigation and standings.

The standings table shows everything you need to know:

• Rank, player name, points (wins are worth 2 points, draws worth 1)
• W-L-D record and spread
• Games played vs. total games
• Promotion zone (top ~5th of division, highlighted in green)
• Relegation zone (bottom ~5th, highlighted in red)
• Your position marked with a star, so you don’t have to hunt for your name

You can switch between divisions using the division selector and navigate historical seasons with the season dropdown. Past seasons show final standings with promotion/relegation results: Promoted, Relegated, Champion, or Stayed.

Right column: League info and your games.

The “My League Games” widget shows your active league games, sorted intelligently - your turn first, then by time remaining. Games where you have less than 24 hours show a red clock icon. Click a game to jump right in.

Playing League Games: The Mobile-First Experience

Once you’re in a game, the interface is designed for quick, efficient turns:

1. Make your move as normal—exchange tiles, play your word, challenge if needed.
2. Click NEXT to jump to the next game waiting for your move.
3. Repeat until you’ve cleared all games waiting for your turn.

This flow works beautifully on mobile.

Installing Woogles as a PWA: Full-Screen Mobile Play

Woogles works as a Progressive Web App (PWA), which means you can install it like a native app on your phone. Here’s how:

On iOS (iPhone/iPad):

1. Open woogles.io in Safari (you can do this on Chrome too if you have a recent version of iOS)
2. Tap the Share button (the square with an arrow pointing up)

3. Scroll down and tap “Add to Home Screen”

4. Tap “Add” in the top right
5. The Woogles icon appears on your home screen like any other app

On Android:

1. Open woogles.io in Chrome
2. Tap the three-dot menu in the top right
3. Select “Add to Home screen” or “Install app”
4. Confirm when prompted
5. Woogles appears in your app drawer

Once installed, Woogles launches in full-screen mode without browser chrome. It feels native, loads faster on subsequent visits due to service worker caching, and keeps you focused on the board without browser distractions. You can switch between apps normally, receive notifications (if enabled), and generally pretend you’re using a native app that cost us months of iOS/Android development. Technology is wonderful.

To access leagues on the Woogles mobile app, just scroll down to the footer and click on Leagues. You can also access Leagues directly from any league game (Click the Back to League button). Remember that you can access your league games directly in the CORRESPONDENCE tab in the lobby, and inside the specific league page.

Promotion, Relegation, and Creating New Divisions

The promotion/relegation system ensures competitive balance over time:

• Every season, roughly the top fifth of each division gets promoted to the next higher division.
• The bottom fifth gets relegated to the next lower division.
• Everyone else stays in their current division.

As the player base grows, new divisions are created dynamically based on registrants and prior season performance. If 50 players register and Division 1 has 15 slots, those 15 are determined by the previous season’s top performers. New players enter at or near the bottom and work their way up.

The league winner each season is the champion of Division 1 - the player who rose to the top of the entire competitive structure. It’s a genuine accomplishment.

What’s Coming: Statistics, Championships, and More

Right now, we’re in the early stages of leagues. The core mechanics should work - games run, standings update, promotion/relegation executes correctly - but we’re missing deeper statistical analysis. Coming soon:

• Per-player statistics: Historical performance across seasons, average scores, high bingos, common opponents, head-to-head records.
• Word statistics: Average division scores, high bingos, coolest / highest scoring words played
• Achievement tracking: Consecutive seasons played, fastest promotion from bottom to Division 1, most draws in a season (the peaceful warrior award).

And here’s the big hypothetical: At the end of next year, we may host a League Championship - a timed, proctored tournament for all prior league winners, with prize money. This is emphatically not confirmed. We need to see how leagues mature, whether the competitive community sustains interest, and whether we can pull together the logistics. But the vision is there: rewarding sustained competitive excellence across multiple seasons with a capstone event.

Even without a championship, the league structure provides something valuable: ongoing competitive play with appropriate opponents and meaningful stakes, accessible to anyone with a flexible schedule.

Early Days: Help Us Validate This

These features are new. The code works - we’ve tested extensively, and the first season runs have completed successfully (on my computer, with test players) - but there’s a difference between “functions correctly” and “serves the competitive community well.” We need your feedback:

• Is the time control appropriate? Too fast? Too slow?
• Are the promotion/relegation percentages right? Too aggressive? Too conservative?
• What statistics matter most to you? We can’t build everything, so prioritization helps.
• How’s the mobile experience? Particularly for players doing most turns on phones.

Jump into the league chat, share your thoughts, and help us refine this into something truly useful for the competitive community. You can also join the #woogleague channel on our Discord (invite: https://discord.gg/GqkUqA7ENm )

Correspondence mode and leagues represent a fundamental expansion of how Woogles can be played competitively. They’re built on the foundation Elliott Manley pioneered and refined over years of playscrab development. We’re grateful for his vision and committed to continuing it.

Now go forth and play some games at a medium pace!

To sign up for the next league season, visit woogles.io/leagues , choose your desired league, and click the Register button. You may need to request an invite in the chat. To start a correspondence game, head to the lobby and select correspondence mode when seeking a game. And if you haven’t installed Woogles as a PWA yet, what are you waiting for?