Alec Baldwin thrown off flight,Words With Friends: the game that saw

Alec Bal

The game, developed by Zynga With Friends, is essentially Scrabble, but with a couple of minor differences.

Released in 2009, it can be played on Android and iOS systems, as well as Facebook. Players interact with their friends via their phones. There is also an in built chat feature that allows players to talk to each other, similar to text messages.

The highly-addictive game has proved popular with other celebrities as well as Baldwin - including the guitarist John Mayer, the actress Eliza Dushku and The Office actor Rainn Wilson.

Paul Bettner, general manager of Zynga With Friends, told USA Today that the game received a boost after Mayer tweeted about it.

"After that, a whole bunch of other musicians were playing the game. Then we saw TV celebrities (The Office's Rainn Wilson among them) started playing and you could just watch people playing on the set of TV shows and movies," he said.

dwin was thrown off an American Airlines flight for playing Words With Friends on his iPad.
Scrabble afficionados may be dismayed to hear that in Words With Friends, the letter 'N' for example is worth two points. In Scrabble it is only one. Similarly, 'J' is worth 10 in WWF, while in the original it is only worth eight.

Following Baldwin's Twitter outrage, #WordsWithFriends began trending on Twitter. Twitter users were largely sympathetic with the 30 Rock star.

One, Wendi Shapiro, wrote of her own addiction to the game: