Last updated on January 26th, 2026 at 03:00 am
Upwords – Entertainment Game Review
Upwords is a Entertainment/Word/Board game from Lonely Star Software, Inc., first launched in 11th January 2013.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 8,910+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Upwords Stand Out
UPWORDS – The Stacking Word Game!
UPWORDS is the classic 3D crossword game where you don’t just play words… you change them! Stack letters on top of existing words to transform them into new words, score more points the higher you stack, and outsmart your opponents.
Why you’ll love it:
- Fun, fast, and endlessly replayable
- Play with friends around the world or challenge random opponents
- Test yourself against the Computer (4 skill levels)
- Pass & Play with family on one device
- In-game chat keeps the competition lively
UPWORDS is more than just fun — it keeps your brain sharp as you find clever ways to build and stack words. The higher you go, the higher you score!
Download today and start stacking your way to victory.
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Terms of use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Privacy Policy: https://www.upwords-app.com/privacy.html
This Entertainment game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Upwords is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 2nd November 2025
Recent improvements include:
- Bug fixes
Download & Availability
Upwords 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 play this game in Word League with players from all around the world. It is a pleasure and always a great challenge to keep improving and even get creative with our word play in lieu of getting a better score! We just love it.
Played the Upwards board for many years with our sister. Now playing this one with her and actually prefer this one.
This game has been so much fun for all our friends and us. We have a game day at least once a month. Laughing and stuffing our faces all the way through a minimum of 2 games. It is the best game Ive ever played around a table or online. Fun has many was of making friends of everyone.
Give us more access to data and statistics like average score per play.
We enjoy playing Upwords with our husband, and we do have a fun competition daily, but we are both frustrated when words that we know are real, are not accepted.
Very good game. Letter draw is unfair. Love this game.
We love this game. Play with our identical twin who lives in London. Games are close and fun. We love it way more than scrabble or Words.much more interesting.
We like Upwords so much that weve purchased the board game and really gotten into itjust finished an amazing four person game. Online, the third party ad system has been broken for several weeks and is impossible to wait out or quit. We tried the paid trial and would be willing to pay $5 for the game, but not $10 or $12. Im willing to wait out normal ad systems, but this is heavy handed and basically forces you to buy if you want to play. The online interface is great, but the AI players seem to have access to pretty unreal vocabularies vs what Im used to seeing among advanced Scrabble and Bananagrams players. Thank you for your work on this.
This is our favorite word game but the new version uses words that arent in the dictionary- AI Elliott cheats.
A very good game with a nice interface but there needs to be a timed game option because in close contests youre going to be thinking through every move. The other major problem is the pass and swap option which only gives you the ability to swap for one letter. It should be two or three.
The new version of Upwords, unlike earlier versions, does not allow you to play against multiple AI opponents.
What?!?! The only way we enjoy playing this game is as a four-player game against the computer, and the most recent update eliminates this type of game entirely! Sadly, we are giving a low rating to this (formerly) five star game.
It is a five star game, but for us we just want to passive play with the computer. The problem is the computer often makes weird words that almost no-one in the world knows. Which means that you often cant play off the computers vocabulary. Its annoying.
We wish we could choose the dictionary that gets used. Also, the game rules are not the same as the board game. These issues dont stop us from enjoy playing vs the computer or others.
Some words that you never heard of, Do exist.
We really like playing Upwords but this version has a terrible dictionary and the computer constantly plays words that are not in an English dictionary. It also rejects words that we play that are perfectly acceptable.
The best Word game ever! So fun so challenging so different every time. Great to play real people.
Ive been playing this game for quite a while. Game play is clunky and words that are ok normally are not good in this game. Not sure what dictionary they use. Also why do men think this is a dating site? Every male we have played wants to talk and learn everything about you.
We like the game a lot, but there are long ads after nearly every single turn. Ive lost patience with it.
Got a new iPad and cant log into existing acct. Have sent 3 messages to support with no response. And yes we have checked spam folders. Help.
We really enjoy playing this game. Its building our vocabulary.
Im really enjoying Upwords but the scoring is off. We did a word down and across and it took a point away. This was not the first time the counts have been off. Not just us, our friends are experiencing the same thing.
Your game does not follow the rules. The computer is allowed to use abbreviations and acronyms words that are not in the dictionary and misspelled words we, as the player, Im not allowed to do any of these things. The game would be much better if we follow the rules however, we keep playing it because we really like the game, but the computer cheats. Dolores DeMayo.
Letters are not distributed fairly game after game. We play to please others but would much rather play the board game where if we continuously get u and is and lets not forget z x j and q it will be from us choosing them not some loony sending them to us.
One of the better word games available online. Recommend to all.
We started playing Upwords back in the 80s with the board game. This is so much fun , you dont have to worry about your score and you get to play multiple people and you can stop and go. The chat is also a nice feature that we dont use much but its still nice to have thank you Upwords app.Its nice you can play against the computer, which is what we usually do when we play our Scrabble. We also play Wordle every day and connections. Deborah from sunny Florida.
This is our favorite game which Ive played for over a decade. We enjoy playing this game with friends and others. It keeps our mind working and we enjoy the challenge.
Being a senior we are always looking for computer games and Upwords is a game for us. Truly enjoy it. Keeps our brain young.
If you like Scrabble you will love Upwords. It is a great variation on the game of Scrabble, and the application is very user friendly.
Otherwise we wouldnt be playing for more than five years, with the same five friends.
Ive been playing this game for several years. Helps us think and focus, pure fun.
If youre going to tweak a classic game how about 8 letters or 9? All Scrabble variants use the same board and number of letters. Even the easiest computer opponent plays the most outrageous, unfamiliar and useless words. They ARE humorous we will admit but the competition is frustratingly stiff. We have found that if you toss out random letters youre bound to get lucky once in a while. The stacking keeps our attention though.
No reflection on getting to play a word game with our dear friend who lives so far awaybut too often one or both is/are stuck with impossible letters, no reflection on anything but happenstance.
Our Upwords buddy and we both have experienced bugs in this program in last two days. Our iPhone 13 bug is that the play button is not live when Im playing. Instead the games button is.
You really, really need to update your dictionary. We mentioned this before in a review .. Nothing yet! There are many words that are recognized in other word games, but not here.
Is there only 86 tiles? We thought the tile distribution was 100 same as the board game 10×10 but when we compared the 100 tiles from the board game we get a distribution thats different. It makes the end game unpredictable.
Best game ever. Play At your leisure, and meet fun people . Im in the Upword League which had been the greatest game playing for us. Happy person. Good game.
This is one of the best games on Internet, and as far as superior and regular Scrabble. We love playing it every day.
Love the game and Ive become addicted! Definitely 5 stars on that. However, the user interface leaves much to be desired. Lots of glitches that need to be addressed.
We enjoy Upwords so much, but the ads with the games are way too long and hard to x out of.
We really want to love this game, but it takes too long for an online opponent game to finish. Would be better if the games/turns were timed. Waiting to play your board hours to days later is not what we call fun. Its frustrating and everyday we contemplate deleting the app, to avoid the frustration.
Quite often words that are designated as playable in the dictionary are not accepted in the game. Descaled is one of them.
The computer player uses words that are not actual words when looked up.
Too much work trying to set it up.
We play this game with our out of state friends. We each play one or two game at a time against each other and chat. Its like they are sitting at our table with us.
This game is a compulsive winner. We enjoy playing it with our family in Illinois because its a way to keep in touch as well as a challenge for the game.
Why this persistent ad that will not let you play even after to watch the entire presentation.
Great game. Been playing for years.
Invalid words played by computer!! Bemas, udon,etc. May have meant beams or undo but got lost in transaction.
This is our favorite because it is challenging.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 4.10
- Size: 83.65 MB
- iOS: 15.6 or later
- Languages: EN, ES
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: Lonely Star Software, Inc.
Last updated: 2nd November 2025 | Genre: Entertainment, Word | Developer: Lonely Star Software, Inc.