Looking for something for a two-player (human against human) game. Want to play against one or two select people, not a world-wide Scrabble audience. Can be internet game server based, peer-to-peer connection, or even local to one machine (I could use VNC/NX to access - however, hiding your tiles from your opponent might be problematic this way).

Can be browser based, native Linux, or Windows based that works with Wine. Don't need tons of features, just basic Scrabble. The simpler the interface, the better, but need graphics and mouse based, not something like curses based. Don't want "turn based" with long delays (e.g., no Android/iPhone "Words with Friends" type of thing), prefer something with more one-on-one interaction between players. IM'ing between players during game OK, but not required (I plan to setup a VOIP call during game play). Free or inexpensive (a few dollars one time purchase) preferred. No recurring online subscriptions.

Will be played (for now), between a LinuxMint13 system and a Ubuntu Intrepid system (yeah, I know that second one is old!)

I have tried Scrabble3D. That looked very promising, but won't run for me. Always says "No internet connection available".

Any suggestions? -- Thanks!

Have you searched the Ubuntu software center? (It looks like you are running Ubuntu). Anyway, you could have a look at pyScrabble, that should be on Mint or Ubuntu's software centers.

jkirchner - thanks for the pointer. I will check that out. I am currently investigating ISC (the "Internet Scrabble Club"). This one looks promising too. I have had a few freezes and lockups using it though, so it may not be the answer. I will put investigation of pyScrabble next on my list. Thanks again!

SOLVED

I found that "Internet Scrabble Club" would occassionally hang on the LinuxMint_13 end of the connection but appeared to work OK on the Ubuntu_Intrepid end. But the freezes/lockups weren't the main issue, it was the fact that game moves on one end were never transmitted to the other end. Bottom line: The game did not work. Probably would have with some debugging, but I went back for a second look at Scrabble3D instead.

With the help of "Scotty", a maintainer/developer of Scrabble3D, the problem of it not working on the LinuxMint_13 end was diagnosed to be a missing /etc/resolv.conf file. This is a known bug in LinuxMint_13 (except *I* didn't know about it!) The omission does not occur in other versions of LinuxMint. The problem was fixed by "sudo dpkg-reconfigure resolvconf" followed by a reboot on the LinuxMint end.

On the Ubuntu_Intrepid end, Scrabble3D would not install because of an unmet dependency. The required file was present, but was of too old a version. Since Ubuntu_Intrepid is so outdated, and the repos are gone, I fixed the install issue with "sudo dpkg --install --force-depends-version ./Scrabble3D-i386.deb" The failed version dependency was for "libatk1.0-0", which I found to be "ATK accessibility toolkit", which makes Gnome accessibility stuff available to an application. Since I didn't need that, I forced the dependency check.

The game plays fine now between the two computers. I have only tried it in the peer-to-peer mode. I have no need to try it in internet-at-large game-server mode since I will always be playing against a very small group of known people and one of us can always start our end as the server and others then connect as clients.

Scrabble3D is a very nice little application. Well done.