Review Insights · App Store
Boggle With Friends: Word Game
Zynga Inc. · 43,852 ratings · ★ 4.5
4.5
★★★★★
43,852 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 76 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"game"
46 negative reviews mention this · 61% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Forces you to buy coins to play solo. Forces you to buy coins to play solo after a few games. Deleted app." - JH ..
2
"play"
28 negative reviews mention this · 37% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Forces you to buy coins to play solo. Forces you to buy coins to play solo after a few games. Deleted app." - JH ..
3
"playing"
15 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Completely Rigged & Glitchy. The game and concept itself is fun. There are so many ads that you spend the equivalent amount of time watching ads as you doing actually playing the game which is disgustingly too many ads. I pay for ad-free and get 5 ‘free plays’ but what…" - Reviewer #863
4
"boggle"
13 negative reviews mention this · 17% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Cannot get out of the commercials. I love boggle but the ads are out of control and make the game unusable. Half the time I can’t exit out of the ad even if I’m on it for 5-10 minutes there’s no way to get out without shutting down the app" - Skjvj
5
"middle"
12 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Almost unplayable. What a disappointment, and what a terrible dilution of Hasbro’s “Boggle” trademark. I’ve been playing this game for probably a decade or more, since before it was bought by Zynga and was called Word Streak With Friends. Back in those good …" - WordieFu
6
"years"
12 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Fun and addictive game but awful app. I’ve played this game for years and the app has become an exercise in patience. It has become so glitchy and frustrating. You have to tap everything so many times to get it to work. The lag is borderline ridiculous. I mean half a minute is …" - hugsforme
7
"games"
11 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Forces you to buy coins to play solo. Forces you to buy coins to play solo after a few games. Deleted app." - JH ..
8
"every"
11 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Completely Rigged & Glitchy. The game and concept itself is fun. There are so many ads that you spend the equivalent amount of time watching ads as you doing actually playing the game which is disgustingly too many ads. I pay for ad-free and get 5 ‘free plays’ but what…" - Reviewer #863
9
"been"
11 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Eff ur effin ads!!!. Would have been fun if effin ads weren’t so effin’ frequent! Hate you!" - Mr. Grahaley
10
"times"
10 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Better on Android. It does not show my Facebook picture, nor my wife’s. The only person I play where there picture is displayed isn’t connected through Facebook. It showed perfectly on my Android phone. I reported it months ago. Still nothing. Beyond that,…" - DanaL56
11
"screen"
10 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "They TAKE AWAY tournament points. Screenshot and you will see. They won’t fix it or give points back. I’m so mad at this app. They screw up games and tournaments by applying ads during games - they promise power ups and don’t deliver when you reach certain scores. They don’t respond to questions...how is this possible? How can they disregar…" - Funnyfarm6
12
"played"
10 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Unusable. This app is unusable. You’re constantly inundated with ads, most of which you cannot close without navigating to the App Store for whatever ad is being displayed. Ridiculous." - t9ns blackwater bay
📋 All 76 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
Forces you to buy coins to play solo
Forces you to buy coins to play solo after a few games. Deleted app.
Unusable
This app is unusable. You’re constantly inundated with ads, most of which you cannot close without navigating to the App Store for whatever ad is being displayed. Ridiculous.
Better on Android
It does not show my Facebook picture, nor my wife’s. The only person I play where there picture is displayed isn’t connected through Facebook. It showed perfectly on my Android phone. I reported it months ago. Still nothing. Beyond that, on the first game of the day it lets you pick a square and get a prize. Instead of just giving you the prize on the first click, it makes you click a total of 4 times to get the prize and get out. It’s annoying and has no purpose. There are some days where there are three or four other popups that I don’t care about that I have to click through. I just want to play the game. The game play is fine, but I hate how useless the support is.
Eff ur effin ads!!!
Would have been fun if effin ads weren’t so effin’ frequent! Hate you!
Ready to delete my favorite game. Playing since 2010.
The startling and completely unnecessary voices that interrupt to say inane things like, “Almost done!” when you’re concentrating on a timed game are incomprehensible. I’m almost ready to delete it. PLEASE remove the sounds or give us the option to turn them off. Having the sound on is necessary to a timed game. Adding distracting voices and sounds just disrupts my concentration and makes me want to quit playing!!!
Ad Paradise
The free version is so incredibly ad-filled they can't help themselves but run ads even DURING your 3-minute timed play. It's maddening because they take the fun out of it. I would happily pay a one-time fee to play without ads, but they got on the prescription greedy wagon and to pay weekly or monthly for both my wife and me, we only play each other, the price is prohibitive. It used to be a lot of fun. Sad.
Horrible UX
Girl, there is no app worse than this. The pop-ups for in game offerings and ads is evil. I can’t click through for more than ten seconds before that little mustache pops up and suddenly I’m in Temu.
They TAKE AWAY tournament points. Screenshot and you will see. They won’t fix it or give points back
I’m so mad at this app. They screw up games and tournaments by applying ads during games - they promise power ups and don’t deliver when you reach certain scores. They don’t respond to questions...how is this possible? How can they disregard players? My friends have switched to another app- I will be next!
Genuinely unusable
Lots of glitches - too many pop ups.
TOO MANY ADS.
at least let us pay a ONE TIME. fee for no ads. not a fee for however many games. ridiculous
Almost unplayable
What a disappointment, and what a terrible dilution of Hasbro’s “Boggle” trademark. I’ve been playing this game for probably a decade or more, since before it was bought by Zynga and was called Word Streak With Friends. Back in those good old days the game worked great, fast and responsive even on older mobile devices. But now? It’s a resource hog and buggy as all get out. It eats battery like nobody’s business.
A significant chunk of the problems are caused by its terrible ad integration. The coders of this grotesquery should be ashamed of themselves: ads which capture the sound channel and refuse to give it back to the game when they are done, necessitating a restart (sound in this game is absolutely crucial because it changes when your timer is about to expire); ads that cover part of the game interface itself on the lobby screen so that you can’t access some controls; ads that require 5 or 6 different screen dismissals before they’ll go away, and often launch your browser or some other app if you don’t hit the tiny little ‘x’ juuuust right; then there’s the terrible performance of the gameplay itself, directly attributable to the addition of ad banners at the top of the screen in the middle of your round (as if you’re going to stop what you are doing in a timed game to read a barely legible ad … are you stupid Zynga?), which then change out every couple of seconds and cause a real performance hit each time, with jerky, lagged input and often false reading of your intended sequence that requires you to repeat it, using up some of your precious time; and the latest absurdity, full screen video ads that just decide to open themselves WHILE YOU ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF A ROUND and the timer for your turn continues to run behind it while you desperately try to quit the app and salvage your score. It’s an abomination.
A host of other regularly appearing glitches unrelated to ads hampers the game functions as well. Sound often starts to “sizzle” before cutting out completely, requiring an app restart. Some rounds start with all the tiles blank (to be fair, haven’t had this happen recently). Sometimes when you play the daily random matchup which is supposed to reward you with 3 tokens, at the end of the 1st round you’ll get an error message to the effect of “you must complete the full two minutes to get the reward” and it’s like, hey you piece of garbage software I DID just do two minutes … it’s literally impossible to finish a round in less time. Then there’s the roughly 20-day daily bonus calendar, with a valuable power-up supposed to be given as the final reward, except that about 80% of the time instead of giving it to you it instead shows an error message that says it expired, despite having only been enabled for a couple of hours or less (vs. 24 hours for all the intermediate bonuses).
Bottom line: AVOID. The only reason I still play is tradition at this point, and defending my record (hampered as I may be by the poor performance) against regular opponents. And yes, undoubtedly a few of the performance issues might improve slightly on a newer phone, but this game USED TO WORK beautifully on this hardware, and has just gone completely in the toilet under Zynga’s stewardship.
A significant chunk of the problems are caused by its terrible ad integration. The coders of this grotesquery should be ashamed of themselves: ads which capture the sound channel and refuse to give it back to the game when they are done, necessitating a restart (sound in this game is absolutely crucial because it changes when your timer is about to expire); ads that cover part of the game interface itself on the lobby screen so that you can’t access some controls; ads that require 5 or 6 different screen dismissals before they’ll go away, and often launch your browser or some other app if you don’t hit the tiny little ‘x’ juuuust right; then there’s the terrible performance of the gameplay itself, directly attributable to the addition of ad banners at the top of the screen in the middle of your round (as if you’re going to stop what you are doing in a timed game to read a barely legible ad … are you stupid Zynga?), which then change out every couple of seconds and cause a real performance hit each time, with jerky, lagged input and often false reading of your intended sequence that requires you to repeat it, using up some of your precious time; and the latest absurdity, full screen video ads that just decide to open themselves WHILE YOU ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF A ROUND and the timer for your turn continues to run behind it while you desperately try to quit the app and salvage your score. It’s an abomination.
A host of other regularly appearing glitches unrelated to ads hampers the game functions as well. Sound often starts to “sizzle” before cutting out completely, requiring an app restart. Some rounds start with all the tiles blank (to be fair, haven’t had this happen recently). Sometimes when you play the daily random matchup which is supposed to reward you with 3 tokens, at the end of the 1st round you’ll get an error message to the effect of “you must complete the full two minutes to get the reward” and it’s like, hey you piece of garbage software I DID just do two minutes … it’s literally impossible to finish a round in less time. Then there’s the roughly 20-day daily bonus calendar, with a valuable power-up supposed to be given as the final reward, except that about 80% of the time instead of giving it to you it instead shows an error message that says it expired, despite having only been enabled for a couple of hours or less (vs. 24 hours for all the intermediate bonuses).
Bottom line: AVOID. The only reason I still play is tradition at this point, and defending my record (hampered as I may be by the poor performance) against regular opponents. And yes, undoubtedly a few of the performance issues might improve slightly on a newer phone, but this game USED TO WORK beautifully on this hardware, and has just gone completely in the toilet under Zynga’s stewardship.
It cheats you
Half the time, when you win a tournament it only awards you half of the points that you are owed. You need the points to level up and win rewards. And lately the computer players have more than doubled their ability. I used to beat them about 5 out of seven times, now I lose 5-6. Stay away.
Crossword Go ad needs to go!
I am absolutely positively tired of the ad for Crossword Go. It takes 10 to 15 minutes for it to clear off the screen before you can continue your game. I’m ready to delete this app altogether if they don’t get rid of that ad. With that particular ad in this game, this game is not even worth one star.
Issues
This game is frustrating.. it tells me I’ve finished the weekly challenge and gives 40 tickets, but several times I never get my tickets!!!
ZERO SCORES
I’ve been playing this for forever. Now, every match has the opponents scoring zero. Has been happening a couple weeks.
Loved it until I couldn’t
Loved this game UNTIL… ads started opening in the middle of my games causing me to lose, my Freeze Power Ups began only lasting for 2 seconds, realizing the “Not Interested” button is actually just another button since it doesn’t reduce any of those ads, clicking the “x” to close the ad in order to go back to the game but instead it redirects you to that ads website, and the ads that randomly appear stationary across the dashboard so I can’t get to the challenges to see what they are or collect on the ones I’ve achieved. I was playing multiple times a day but it’s no longer fun so I’m deleting the app as soon as I’m done wrong this. ✌️
Opening links on its own
This game has begun opening links to safari and worse, directly to Amazon with no interaction with the screen. It just opened Amazon while lying on my coffee table untouched as an ad for Aveno played!!!
Incorrect scoring
Me and my wife played two games. Each time the app on my phone reported me as winning and on her phone it reported her as winning and had wildly different scores. Disappointing. Also not cool that we can’t play the same board at the same time.
This app is a joke
The WORD GAME is fun but the ads are cancer, the rewards system is pointless, there is 0 support, and they think playing a word game without ads is worth 70 dollars a year. Thats 5.99 a month, for something that used to cost like 3.99, ONCE.
Bots ruined the game
I’ve been playing this for 15 years. Recently I’ve noticed that the matchups with other players have changed. Now all I get are one “opponent” who has stats like a newbie or another with off the chart stats and neither “play” to the indicated level - they’re bots.
Bots!
Please stop the bots from starting games with me.
Ads too long
The ads are horrendous. They go on forever with no way to exit.
Too Many Strangers in Boggle with Friends
As a long-time player, I used to love this game. Recently, however, BwF removed the ability to opt out of the leaderboard and all of a sudden strangers keep starting games with me - three at a time. I can decline, but then they count for losses. And are promptly replace by new invites. The games with strangers always remain at the top of my games, moving active games with friends to the bottom of the queue, no matter how recent the move.
There is no way to opt out or block these games. When I contact support, the app crashes every time I select an option (such as game play) to continue the chat. There is no way to start a new ticket or alert support of the error. Sadly, I’m out.
There is no way to opt out or block these games. When I contact support, the app crashes every time I select an option (such as game play) to continue the chat. There is no way to start a new ticket or alert support of the error. Sadly, I’m out.
Smart Match
My smartwatch is tuned off so I can only play with friends. All of a sudden I’m getting requests from people I don’t know (at least 20 in a day!)This is the second time this has happened. They fixed it last time - fix it again
Annoying ads
If it wasn’t for the ads, this app would be great. But the ads constantly pops up and you can’t get around it wanting you to download another game.
Ads won’t turn off
I love Boggle until an ad comes on and will not turn off to let you back into game even when closing app and reopening. Deleted and restored played a little until another add pops up in middle of game then another ad won’t turn off and let you back into game.
Ridden with ads and cheaters
Used to be fun but every tournament has cheaters and exploiters now. Not to mention the most ads I have ever had across any app I’ve ever used.
Too many ads!
Tons of ads and tournaments are slow. Not worth the time.
Forced consent to data sharing
After 15+ years of daily play, Zynga now blocks access unless you agree to broad data sharing with 3rd parties. There is no opt-out. This is coercive and deeply disturbing! I’m deleting the app. My opinion? Their manipulative demand is incredibly disrespectful to you and me. And they’re fine with that. Maybe delete for yourself too.
New ads in the middle of a turn
I loved playing until the ads started popping up in the middle of a turn. I’m done. Deleting app.
Uninstalled
I’ve played this a lot over the past few years. Now they have pop up ads on the middle of games. Uninstalling
Game is great when it works.
Update Jan. 2026 nor the mere are full screen videos that pop up randomly when in a times match. How fricking annoying can they make this app. Used to be great , then just good, now getting pretty lousy.
Like others have said this game has gone downhill the past year or two. Constant hitches and hangs mid game, and the occasional crash. Slow to load and let you do anything. More recently you even get an ad video start playing full screen while you are in a timed round. Even when in the main screen selecting a match can be very very unresponsive. Even to the point where you aren’t sure you tapped on an opponent, but you did. When that happens sometimes it will start 2 or more matches against the same opponent when you only wanted to start one. Very annoying. If not for these issue it’s a really good game.
Like others have said this game has gone downhill the past year or two. Constant hitches and hangs mid game, and the occasional crash. Slow to load and let you do anything. More recently you even get an ad video start playing full screen while you are in a timed round. Even when in the main screen selecting a match can be very very unresponsive. Even to the point where you aren’t sure you tapped on an opponent, but you did. When that happens sometimes it will start 2 or more matches against the same opponent when you only wanted to start one. Very annoying. If not for these issue it’s a really good game.
Ads DURING game play rounds
As if there weren’t enough ads already, you go and add even more. Now there are multiple ads DURING rounds, so you completely lose your focus and you might forget which words you’ve already played since you have to wait out the 30 seconds for it to continue. And if you’ve selected a time power-up, you’ll still have to deal with a 30-seconds add they’re now tacking on for EVERY MINUTE OF GAME PLAY. If you try to force-close the program and go back in to resume your game, it will take you right back into an ad. Deleting this trash at long last if the don’t do’s this mess.
Word Christ is not recognized by Boggle
So disappointed to see Boggle with Friends does not recognize the word CHRIST! Christians beware downloading this game
TOO MANY ADS!
Too many ads make it difficult and frustrating to play!
Gets worse every year
Used to be fun. Can’t get out of ads even if they’re 1+ minutes long
Game destroyed.
This game used to be an innocent and fun word game. It has been destroyed by the most recent update. It is now a hellhole of offensive and locked in advertising. Move on.
Ad Cancer
Why….just why would you EVER stop matches to play ads? You will be in the middle of your 90-second match and an ad will suddenly play, just to dump you back in the game 30 seconds later. It always throws me off and has made the game unplayable.
Ads ruined the game
You cant even check your score because the ads. No way to click out of the ads when they start rolling, even with waiting more than a minute.
Freeze
App just decided to start freezing when I open it. Can’t do anything.
App Freezes
Why is this app always unresponsive? It keeps freezing on me, rendering itself useless. I uninstall the app and reinstall and login and it’s still frozen. I bought tokens for the game! Please fix this!
ShanaP
I ABSOLUTELY HATE THIS APP. It’s always freezing despite wanting more access to your personal account information. So tired!
App freezes
I love Boggle, but this app is frustrating. It freezes a lot!! You have to delete and redownload a few times a week. Not worth it!
Greedy Greedy Greedy
I’m ok with ads. I want to support game developers. They should make money. These new mid-game ads though are the WORST. Not only is it an extra ad, but it completely ruins the gameplay experience by interrupting mid thought. Just compete greed by the developers to get an extra ad in ruining the game. I won’t even start on the bugginess where you can’t even get into the game without the app freezing half the time. Find a better game, this one isn’t worth your time any more.
Fun game, horrible app
This app has never been great. It has always been glitchy. But now? Pop up ads IN THE MIDDLE OF GAMES. Stupid stickers that also pop up in the middle of games that I can't seem to turn off. Reading through the reviews, I've seen people say there are other Boggle apps. I'll be checking those out today.
5 pop ups
Opened the game for the first time and just barraged with pop ups. Mind boggling. How am I supposed to decide if I want to subscribe if i haven’t even played the game yet.
Bugs are NEVER fixed!
I love the game of Boggle, but I do NOT love this app. I’ve been dealing with game issues for YEARS! Simple, basic issues that are never addressed.
My latest problem is that the game is frozen, and won’t even load when I delete it and attempt to reinstall. Come on Zinga…
FIX THIS GAME!!
My latest problem is that the game is frozen, and won’t even load when I delete it and attempt to reinstall. Come on Zinga…
FIX THIS GAME!!
What Happened?
I have been playing this game for many years. I enjoy challenging other players, but mostly I am challenging myself. I believe it helps to keep my mind sharp.
There has always been the opportunity to buy points to keep playing when you use up your starting points. I never do that. I wait for my points to refill in a couple of hours.
As of today, there is an ad I have to sit through before I can play my next game. I can’t tell you how extraordinarily annoying I find that. It looks like Boggle joined up with another game and they want ads. May I suggest you don’t do this after every game played. Try having one or two ads when the player comes onto the site. I might have to stop playing as I have no patience for an ad after every game. I would give Boggle 5 stars but I can’t. You are destroying the experience for me.
There has always been the opportunity to buy points to keep playing when you use up your starting points. I never do that. I wait for my points to refill in a couple of hours.
As of today, there is an ad I have to sit through before I can play my next game. I can’t tell you how extraordinarily annoying I find that. It looks like Boggle joined up with another game and they want ads. May I suggest you don’t do this after every game played. Try having one or two ads when the player comes onto the site. I might have to stop playing as I have no patience for an ad after every game. I would give Boggle 5 stars but I can’t. You are destroying the experience for me.
Sucks
This app sucks! It freezes a lot on iPhone and iPad
App is frozen. Fix it, please!
I cannot click on anything. I cannot scroll. Game is currently unplayable! Please fix this issue.
+ 26 more in the clipboard copy
Sentiment summary
88%
Positive (4-5★)
5%
Neutral (3★)
7%
Negative (1-2★)