I looked at it more closely, and found that some of the tabs on that one spot were half-pressed down (there are six per spot, which is how the system recognizes each letter). That would explain the error... except that when I put a three-letter word in (like CAT), it recognizes it from that point on. Weird.
So after reading all these posts about this happening to other people, and those who opened it up and cleaned it, I decided to try it myself. (a little background: I was schooled as an electrical engineer) For those of you who don't want to read the gory details, nineteen screws, two different screwdrivers, one pair of pliers, and one hour later, it's now working.
If you get one that works out of the box, great. But based on the other reviews, if you get one that doesn't work (which seems like the odds are pretty good that it won't) and you don't have experience with small parts and electronics, you're probably best off getting your money back to avoid the hassles.
**Now, for those who want to know the gory details of fixing this little issue:
First, in order to open the housing, you have to loosen twelve philips screws to get the two parts of the housing together. Not too bad; this can be done with an ordinary screwdriver.
Next, in order to fix the issue of the stuck tabs, you need to separate the electronics plate from the housing. In total, there were eight small screws (you need a No.1 or smaller precision screwdriver) to loosen to completely get the plate off. Because I only had one that was a problem, I got away with loosening only five of the small screws. This freed up the assembly where the magnetic letters go.
Once you get that assembly out, you need to separate the tab section from the magnetic section. Each of the assemblies has two small screws connecting the two parts, which needs to be undone. You can put aside the magnetic section
Now you have the tab section. This section is composed of three main parts: the actual green tabs (six), a rubber gasket-type cover that they sit on, and the electronics backing which is pressure-activated based on which tabs are depressed. Once I looked at it, I realized that the problem with my device was that the rubber cover was stuck, which is why some tabs were depressed. (Therefore, swabbing it with alcohol would not have solved the problem). Once I worked it loose, I could reassemble the parts. Note that this can be very laborious if you don't have a pair of pliers and/or haven't worked with small parts before, as the tabs sit precariously on the rubber gasket!
Once I reassembled everything, it worked fine... but it took about an hour to do (and a very patient wife!)
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I was delighted to find out the magnets from the Fridge Phonics Magnetic Letter set also work with this! So if you have both, you can spell out double lettered words (such as "dad" and "mom" (and it is programmed to read those words, as well!)The only problems we've been having with it are related to the tinny sound. The Fridge Phonics Magnetic Letter set sounded nice, but the Word Whammer sound quality is poorer. I know I had a hard time telling "Find the 'F'" from "Find the 'S'". Lucky for us adults, if we know what word it wants us to spell, we know which letter, but it confounds the kids.
If it weren't for the sound quality the toy would be *perfect*. It is really well designed, and very effective at keeping the kid's interest long enough for them not to realize they're learning while they're having fun. If you don't mind needing to translate what the machine said every so often, I highly recommend this.
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I bought this for my three year old son on Sunday. It's only Tuesday and he is spelling words on his own without a problem. I recommend that you purchase the Fridge Phonics Alphabet Letters FIRST like I did, so they can learn their letters well. Once they master the entire alphabet, they can graduate to the Word Wammer. I only showed him how to play once, and he went on from there. It's amazing! Leap Frog is the best! Hopefully they will come up with fridge numbers soon!!Honest reviews on Fridge Words Magnetic Word Builder
My daugter received both the Word Whammer and Fridge Phonics for her second birthday. The Word Whammer has three modes. The first mode is almost identical to the Fridge Phonics set. The song is a little bit shorter, but it sings the letter name and the sounds it makes. If you press a letter twice, it has a phrase with that letter, something that the Fridge Phonics doesn't do. For example, the "c" is "It's c-c-c-c-old in here!". The "a" is "aaaaaaah! I'm scared of monsters!". It's very cute. The second mode is for making words. If you just put in one letter, it will prompt you to put a vowel (a "blue letter") in the second spot. When you spell a word, it sings a short song. In the third mode, it prompts you to try to spell words that rhyme. It is a great toy with much more "grow with me" potential than the Fridge Phonics.Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Fridge Words Magnetic Word Builder
Hi, I just received this item on amazon last week, just wanted to point out a few things:1. You will notice in the product images are 2 products, the Word Whammer and the Word Builder, though this listing is for the Word Builder.
The Word Builder is the updated version of the Word Whammer.
However, when I recieved my order from Amazon they sent me the wrong product, they sent me the Word Whammer at first!
I called them and they graciously sent the Word Builder by 1 day mail, so be aware that this may happen.
2. Other then the airplane theme, someone pointed out to me that the Word Builder includes lowercase letters. I thought this meant that it has both upper and lowercase letters. It doesn't. It ONLY has lowercase letters.
I think the idea is that if you bought the Leapfrog Fridge Phonics Magnetic Alphabet set, meant for younger kids just learning letters, you would have the uppercase, then when your child is older, you get this one, the Word Builder which has the lowercase letters.
Since my child is 2 1/2 and I want the uppercase letters, I'm going to to buy this too, I guess... :(
Fyi, the Word Whammer had/has only uppercase like the LP fridge Alphabet Set.
Update: I bought the Fridge Phonics Magnetic Alphabet set also, however I found out they are not interchangeable, the uppercase letters from the Fridge Phonics set do not fit in the Word Builder.
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