There's always time for a little bit of gaming, especially over a long summer break, so load up on interactive games and apps for long journeys, balmy evenings or rainy days with this selection. Today, we're looking at nine apps for board game fans - three of the best from the worlds of chess, scrabble and mahjong.
Chess
Shredder Chess (iOS) boasts a world champion artificial intelligence to play against, which can be calibrated to mimic varying levels of human skill, while puzzle modes and a coach feature gently encourage improvement.
Cyber Chess (iOS) integrates with Freechess.org for play against hundreds of thousands of human opponents, as well as the Internet Chess Club's Chessclub.com - just like Chess for Android does on Android systems.
tChess Pro (iOS) is another App Store favorite, also offering strong AI and move analysis as well as e-book Learn Chess.
Scrabble
As well as the official Scrabble app published by Electronic Arts, several other options exist for fans of the letter arrangement game. Among them, Wordfeud (iOS, Android, Windows Phone) is free or a $2.99 upgrade and allows play between owners of Android and iOS devices, with multilingual support that includes English, French, Spanish and Dutch.
Words with Friends (iOS, Android, Windows Phone) offers additional region-based matchups as well as a wide range of in-app purchases, while Lexulous (iOS, Android, free or $1.99 without ads) has a move analyser and, like Words with Friends, is compatible with its Facebook version.
Mahjong
China's ancient four-player game of tiles and tactics has several well appreciated editions in mobile format. Of these, MobileAge's Shanghai Mahjong (iOS) has been around since 2008, Moonlight Mahjong (iOS, $0.99) has fully 3D mahjong models to rotate and explore before carefully disassembling, and Magma Mobile's free Mahjong (Android) comes with 200 tables and a hint system.
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