Jeffrey is playing Scrabulous, an Internet version of Scrabble that has been burning up the social-networking site Facebook. There, according to numbers visible online, the game draws more than 610,000 players a day; an affiliated Scrabulous Web site (www.scrabulous.com) nets the India-based developers up to $25,000 a month from advertisements.

But the fun could stop any minute. Scrabble-maker Hasbro sent the game's developers a "cease and desist" letter earlier this month, saying the game infringed on its copyright.

For now, the application is still up and running, so Jeffrey and other Scrabulous fans across the world are still logging on.

Jeffrey, a 37-year-old development officer for United Way, can remember sitting around an actual Scrabble board with her older siblings.

A quarter-century later, things have changed. Her siblings are scattered across the country, far from Jeffrey's West Philadelphia home. So now the family that didn't even have a TV growing up has found a way to reconnect by waging Scrabble matches over the Internet.

"It's just really fun," she said. "I have people that I play all over the world and then there are people I play here. It's kind of a neat way to connect online."

Created by Calcutta-based brothers Jayant and Rajat Agarwalla, ages 21 and 26, respectively, Scrabulous started as an independent Web site called Bingo Binge in 2005. Jayant had been playing Scrabble on a different online site, but stopped when the site started charging a fee. The brothers wanted to play for free, and thought others would too.

The site was an instant hit, so much so that the Agarwalla's server crashed at the end of 2005. In July of 2006, they rebranded the site as Scrabulous to continued success.

Then last year, they added the game to Facebook, and its popularity skyrocketed. The game has even inspired a song, performed Weird-Al-Yankovic-style to the tune of Fergie's "Glamorous."

"It has given a fresh lease of life to the age-old game which usually resides in the attics," Jayant said through an e-mail interview on Facebook. "It makes it so easy to stay in touch without writing an e-mail everyday. Just play a move and you are in touch; it barely takes a minute."

Users seem to agree.

"It's more readily available, which is nice," said Patrick Hanley, a 25-year-old law clerk from Collingswood. "I always liked the game, but it's hard to convince people to break out the Scrabble board. It's easy to convince people to play when they can play on their own time."

That's not how toy giant Hasbro sees it. Having spent 60 years building the Scrabble brand, it is looking to come to an amicable solution with the Agarwalla brothers. If not, Hasbro is resolved to shut Scrabulous down.

Through a representative, Hasbro declined to comment for this article.

The Agarwallas would not speak on legal matters, but did express gratitude for the support from Scrabulous fans. A multitude of "Save Scrabulous" groups have popped up on various blogs and social-network communities over the last three weeks. More than two dozen are on Facebook itself, where the largest totals over 55,000 members.

"I understand from a branding standpoint, Hasbro or whoever owns it, but to my mind there should be a way to work it out," said Jeffrey, a member of Save Scrabulous on Facebook! "Besides, it's Facebook. Facebook is a happy place."

Scrabulous fans offer a number of reasons for their adherence to the game. The chief benefit is that it's not time-sensitive, so it can be played at one's convenience. Other plusses include a list of two-letter words, ranked statistics, an instant-messaging system, and the comfort of facilitated gaming.

"You don't really have to worry about arguing over a word, which saves a lot of time," Jeffrey said. "If a word goes through, it's a word."

"I really appreciate the auto-score tally, because it can be a pain counting up your points," said Julie Laquer, 21, an administrative assistant from Doylestown. "It also tells you how much a word will be before you play it, so there's a convenience there."

Despite these perks, there is a real possibility that Scrabulous' days could be numbered. Scrabulous fans have expressed confusion over this, but some aren't all that worried.

"It's hard to see how it would reflect negatively on Scrabble for everyone to be more intimately associated with how to play the game," Hanley said. "I also think that in this electronic age, what we learned from Napster being shut down is that something else will come along and fill that void."

Still, others aren't so nonchalant. For many, the main draw of Scrabulous is that it exists on Facebook.

"It's just so convenient to have it as an application on Facebook," said Laquer. "If it closes down and I saw a link to another site, I'd go to it. But I wouldn't exactly go out of my way to try to find one."