Last updated on January 17th, 2026 at 08:12 am
Word Abacus – Education Game Review
Word Abacus is a Education/Word/Board game from Johannes Fieres, first launched in 4th September 2010.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 20+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Word Abacus Stand Out
Test your word pool in this thrilling word puzzle game! Find English words by linking adjacent letter beads left, right, up, or down. Shift the letter beads like an abacus to create new letter combinations.
There's no time pressure. Relax and focus. It's only about your skill.
You think your vocabulary is outstanding? Compare your high score with players all over the English-speaking world.
This game recognizes both American and British spelling.
In-Game Word Hints
Only available in the premium version. You enable word hints in the menu "Help/Settings" -> "Word Hints". Once enabled, word hints are requested by tapping the question-mark button in the bottom right corner of the game board. Note: Once a word hint was requested in a game, further scoring is disabled.
FREE vs. Premium version
This game is brought to you free of charge without functional limitations. However, adverts are displayed during game play. Give our sponsors a chance and visit their sites!
At your option, you may upgrade to the Premium version as an In-App Purchase. The Premium version features
- An ad-free game experience
- In-game word hints (see above).
This Education game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Word Abacus is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 14th June 2020
Recent improvements include:
Fixed issue with entering player name
Download & Availability
Word Abacus is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
We've been playing this game a long time & its still wonderfully clever. Wish they did make it so hard as you level up, but its much better than it used to be. We hope someone there is still updating words CYBER is a word.
We love this game BUT when you get to a certain level it is impossible to play. Then it abruptly ends. We cant even see what level we were on before it starts on level one again. If that can be fixed the game would be awesome.
We love this game and had it for a few years now. We do have a major gripe with it though…. No matter how many times we have played this game, we cant get past level 14… Can anyone else? It seems to just shoot out the red circles of death continuously after like, level 10 and it gets worse from 11 to 14, you just dont get enough time to get rid of them al even if you make words with multiple red circled letters, plus it seems like the game also seals your fate by putting out more and more Xs and Zs and Qs! The makers of this game really should slow up on the red circled letters and allow more vowels… Oh and dont limit the three letter words, we should be able to use them when and if we can.
Ive enjoyed word, abacus for several years. It keeps our mind sharp to look for all kinds of words at various angles. All of a sudden the screen no longer comes up horizontal, but when the game starts it is stuck in the vertical position.The game used to allow one to play with the letters horizontally, or rotate the entire screen to be 180 in the other direction, or play the game vertically. Now when the game starts one cant rotate the screen the screen remains locked in the vertical position and its hard to play the game 100% of the time stuck in the vertical position.
We have been playing this game for years and loved it. The new version is awful. It freezes on a discontinued game, and sometimes the colored letters dont show up unless you stop and reload the game. We understand that the ads must be shown, but going back to the game as it was doesnt always work.
There is nothing else like Word Abaccus! It was brilliant for the developers to think of this and we cannot find anything else like this.
We truly enjoy this little gem. We "hinted" to the creator to update this App., and guess what? TLogic.de's Kevin Atkinson and his team did so! Thank you! This is one of our two favorite games, as we play only a few. It offers a fun challenge and keeps our mind active. It COSTS NOTHING to give it try and we encourage you to do so. Be sure to read how it works or you may misunderstand its approach.
Why does this game not save our progress? We always have to begin at Level 1.
So far it is great for a relaxed, focused mental challenge. Stress diminishes after a few minutes with this game. It nudges you into looking for longer words…increasing focus challenge and enjoyment. Remember words not used as much anymore. FUN! Enjoy this more every time we use it!!! Don't miss a day and many days more than once. Thank you! One feature we wish you could add is ability to look up words, even during the game. Great game! Still enjoying … Had it a long time.
We've been playing this game a long time! What is really getting on our nerves, is that once you reach about level 14, it starts throwing "X"s & "Z"s at you. It sets you up, that you cannot win at all it's not even possible. You can be Miriam freakin' Webster and you will not win this game. In other words, it's not fair. For that reason, we're getting quite tired of this potentially great game. Resolve for this problem would be to just suddenly crash, or, just make a statement that we're too smart for you. God forbid, that we should reach some kind of "level 22".
Our iPhone sent a message that the creator of this app needs to update it or it will slow our phone down. We have not seen an update ever. Forthcoming.
The red indicators/bars showing status of game-ending words need to be more distinct. It's very difficult how many bars remain on a letter; we've had too many premature "game over" because the visual distinction isn't obvious enough. Frustrating.
We like to play but do not understand why the game stops and a letter flashes when there is plenty of time left in the round. Very annoying that there is no guide book or hints available.
Did it get un-stuck? How did you do it? We are stuck too.
Loved this app, but now when we open it, it is frozen on the "Buy" or "No, thanks" screen. No, thanks. :(.
If you are slow witted with a mediocre education you will love this game. Words over an 8th grade level are not allowed.
New double tap submission doesn't work.
We really like this Ap when we first got it, but now we have to pound the letters to get them to register (iPad)' so we hardly use it anymore and will not recommend it to anyone. We had forgotten why we had deleted this game, so reloaded it, now we remember, we have to beat the keys so they register. Was hoping this had been fixed, wanted to buy it, but won't now.
Horrible implementation, tapping sometimes doesn't work and you can't slide, too annoying, good idea just poor programming.
It's challenging and fun….and addictive. We haven't had any of the problems others have mentioned, except once the upgrade wouldn't let us press "no thanks" ….but since then it does. Very clever game.
Eared so we tried it again and it said it's already installed what's going on.
This is really a lot of fun, you can play alone or with someone. Your word skills really improve. We ma surprised it is a free app. Have fun.
This is a great game to keep your mind sharp. We like it better than crosswords. It is as easy or as hard as you make it. Set a goal and then try to beat it. It is also great for kids to help with their spelling.
We play this game daily and have enjoyed it ….however recently we have surpassed our recorded highest scores and abacus has not acknowledged it…..It is no fun if u don't have this impetus to beat your last highest score…..at first we thought it was an electronic error ,but it is continuing to happen…..we no longer have a desire yo play for this reason….. Disappointed in V.B.
Quite an addictive game!!! Only drawback is that you have to be touching a letter several times before it is highlighted – very annoying!! This MUST be fixed!! That is why we have given it a 4 star rating.
Great game that we can't get enough of. With a few improvements the game could earn 5 stars. For one, the sounds keeps going in and out. Sometimes we don't mind but other times we want to decide for ourselves. Second, it would be nice to see how we're trending on each level when compared to the high score. Last, improve the touch response. We've lost points because the system didn't respond to all the letters that were punched. And, we had hit submit before realizing the error.
Awesome! Can't think of anything we would change.
We've been playing Word Abacus Free for a couple of months when suddenly a $1.99 upgrade option appeared. We were unable to decline the upgrade because the "No Thanks" option was unresponsive. We were left with only the option to purchase the upgrade in order to continue playing. We deleted the app. Very disappointing.
One touch does not select a letter. Two, sometimes three, touches are required making what should be fun an exercise in pain. Now deleted. Jep.
The scrolling ads at the top of the screen are too distracting to the eye to focus on the game. We're not sure what to rate this game anymore. Used to be 4-star and now it's a 0.
Ouch, this new update causes tiles to take up to 15 seconds to highlight. It's very frustrating. We lost a game because the timed letters wouldn't highlight in time.
We like the game, but we seem to have to touch the screen numerous times to get it to react. This is frustrating. And the game is not so interesting that it is worth the effort.
Addictive and fun the whole family can play.
Thank you for updating this so quickly. This game is soooooo addicting.
Love this game and bought the upgrade. Wish there was a way to view your score and level attained at the end of each game whether it is a high scoring one or not.
Love the game but we want to see our score at the end of each game, not just when it is our highest score. Would it be that hard to display it for a couple of seconds.
We like this game. We even upgraded it, but after the last update it no longer saves the game progress. We have to start over every time we open the app. We've played it much less as a result.
Sluggish response in tapping the letters. Far too frustrating to make this at all fun.
Ever since we updated it we have not been able to play it. It's been very frustrating because we love the game but hate the frustration. Please fix this issue soon.
We loved this game and since the upgrade it has crashed consistently. It crashed the other day in the middle of a game and we cannot get it to boot up again. Please fix this!!! We continue to have issues with this game. Our we pad show it as installed but it is not. Any suggestions on how this can be fixed.
We just set a high score of 802,987,654,345. Of course you can do this when there is no such thing as an improperly spelled word. A recent update now allows any word no matter how it is spelled. So ring up a stupidly high score before the glitch is fixed.
We used to play this game and it worked fine. Tonight, we downloaded the update. Now when we play, it isn't recognizing improper words. For example, we can chose the letters xmitehjy and it will recognize it as a word and give us points for it! Something is definitely wrong. Other than that, it used to be a very fun game.
Love this game. Can't stop playing and don't need to wait on anyone to reply back like wwf.
It's great fun, but it's starting to crash more often again.
This is our favorite app. Thank you for the update. It still crashes occasionally, but so much better. Please consider moving the mix button, we accidentally press it too many times.
Only improvement we would like to suggest is an endless mode. 5 stars when you do.
We were loving this game and was going to purchase it. However in the past month or so it constantly crashes. We can't even get the app to open any long even after uninstalling and reinstalling it. The few times we are able to open while in the middle of the game it crashes and thats it, not able to keep the app open any longer.
We were enjoying this so much at first that we were thinking of upgrading. But then it crashed. We tried again, it crashed again. And again, and again. We're glad we didn't upgrade now, and we are very disappointed as we'd love to be able to play for more than a minute or two at a time.
Great game until upgrade. Now it crashes constantly making the game unplayable. Please fix.
We loved this game until we updated it. Crashed constantly so we deleted it. That was at least a month ago. Still not fixed.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.6.2
- Size: 20.15 MB
- iOS: 9.3 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: Johannes Fieres
Last updated: 14th June 2020 | Genre: Education, Word | Developer: Johannes Fieres