Oregon’s well-known for its love of books. So it’s no surprise the state’s also a hotbed for Scrabble.

You’ll find regular Scrabble get-togethers, and a Portlander was the game’s National Champion in 2009.

So that plethora of word nerds may explain why recent changes to a Scrabble mobile app, have some locals spelling out a few choice phrases.

Kristian Foden-Vencil / OPBYvonne Combs plays Scrabble for the mental exercise.

It’s one o’clock on a Thursday afternoon at the Lake Oswego Community Center. Everett Williams sits at a small metal table with Kit Carter and Yvonne Combs. They’re surrounded by Scrabble dictionaries and little blue counters.

“I started playing scrabble with my parents back in school. I was pretty good then. Since then I’ve met people whom can consistently beat me, but we’re all about the same. There’s one woman who comes who’s really good. She goes to tournaments all around the country. So when she’s here, she wins about three out of four or four out of five. So now we have a better chance when she’s not here,” Williams said.

Next around the table is Yvonne Combs — she’s looking for beneficial effects of the game.

“Well, it stimulates your thought processes and I have a little trouble with short-term memory. So it’s a good exercise,” according to Combs.

Kristian: “KA is a word? K-A?”

Everett Williams: “Yup.We have a cheat sheet that has very improbable small words with like a’a, the lava is a’a, or ka, za and so on that nobody knows about.”

Kristian: “I’ve got to know what it means, though. Do you know what it means?”

Everett Williams: “The Scrabble dictionary has some obscure — often they’re Greek letters or Korea’s unit of currency in the 12th century….”

Apparently Ka is an Egyptian spirit, whom some believe is a vital force living within a person or a statue.

Anyway, around this table some people spend 10 hours a week using such words – both at casual get-togethers or at home on a computer.

And many people, like retired antique dealer Christine Palmer, have taken the game up on their mobile phones.

Kristian Foden-Vencil / OPBYvonne Combs and Kit Carter play Scrabble at the Lake Oswego Community Center.

“You know, I don’t have to wait for my husband to be available to sit and play at the table. And there’s features about playing online that are really nice, you don’t have that pressure of someone sitting across the table from you waiting to play,” Palmer said.

Electronic Arts is the company that makes one of the most popular Scrabble apps. It has “up-graded” its game to make it more social. Palmer says she and her friends think it’s ridiculous.

“You play a word and they want you to post it on Facebook. And it’s like, who cares. You’re really playing a game with yourself, and your own memory and your own vocabulary. And your opponent kind of adds in the random value and I don’t understand how it relates to social media.”

Palmer is not alone. In the review section for the game, thousands of people have complained.

“I’d love to know what the company thinks about it. I’d love to be sitting in that meeting room saying, ‘Oh gee, this isn’t going over as good as we thought it was.'”

I couldn’t do that for Palmer, but I did contact Electronic Arts.

Spokeswoman Lauren Svensson wouldn’t agree to be recorded, but she released a statement saying the update has richer chat features; improved load times; a new “Teacher Feature” and the ability to connect more easily with friends, which, the statement says, is the very heritage of Scrabble.

Svensson also said the company is aware some users are unsatisfied and is working to address those concerns with a bug fix and an in-game survey.

Back at the Lake Oswego Community Center, Everett Williams prefers the traditional game. He likes to sit around the table and talk to his opponents.

“I don’t like these gadgets. To me they don’t improve anything,” says Williams.

Retiree Kit Carter says she steers clear for other reasons.

“I don’t want to get addicted to it because I have a lot of other stuff to do during the day.”

Me too!

This story originally appeared on Oregon Public Broadcasting.