In keeping with the spirit of the eReader, Kindle, Shuffled Row is a word game for the Amazon-created handheld device. Of the two word games released by Amazon this summer, namely Shuffled Row and Every Word, it is Shuffled Row that is definitely the most addictive.

The game starts off with a cache of 60 letter tiles with a certain, predetermined number of each available per round. The letter tiles are kind of like Scrabble pieces and each has an assigned letter value. The tiles are doled out periodically and as they appear, you must come up with a word that will clear them off the board to make room for more tiles.

The longer the word you create, the more you score for that word. You must use at least two letters to form a word, but no bonuses kick in until you are forming words at least four letters long. The point of the game is to use all the tiles with none left over, which, if you pull it off, earns you an Empty Rack Bonus.

It’s relatively easy to breeze through the game on short words alone, but doing so comes at the cost of a lower score; earning a higher score requires more risk, more patience and a wider vocabulary.

One negative is that the game, like Every Word, is a battery hog on Kindle and you can easily drain down a full K3 battery in only a few hours of playing Shuffled Row, whereas if you purely use your Kindle to read books, one charge can last three to four weeks.

Shuffled Row is great for those with hitting the road with travel deals, like a family vacation, though, because even if your kids don’t have the patience to spend the whole drive reading, something like Shuffled Row can keep them engaged. Variety’s the perfect spice to make Kindle even more useful, and Shuffled Row is certainly a welcome addition to my K3′s library.

Best of all, it’s free.