Spice up your Scrabble with Wildwords

Scrabble's random draw of tiles, well-designed board, and game play that shifts the context of the game after every turn makes it one of the most replayable games in history. But If you're anything like us then you've grown a bit tired of the same common Scrabble pitfalls. We hate festering through an entire game hoping to pickup that elusive 'U' tile to match the 'Q' we drew in the first round. That's just not fun, nor is getting a Z and all consonants. Frustrating indeed, and we've all been there too often. Yes, we know that "Qat", "Qintar" and "Qaid" are all valid Q-words, but they only get you so far, and Qat usually doesn't net very many points.

Enter Wildwords, a game that thwacks your frontal Scrabble lobe with the wooden stock of an elephant gun. No longer will you play with only the letters in the tray in front of you -- now the voices inside your head get their turn, too (and the leprechaun with the super nova eyes told us that's healthy.)

Wildwords adds Asterisk tiles and the new wild card squares to the Scrabble board. Both of these wildcard elements can represent either a single letter, or a series of letters. You don't have to declare what a word is when you play a wild card. However an opponent may challenge you immediately after the play, at which point you're forced to declare what the word is (or was, or will be if you've gotta be like that). If you can produce a legal word then your opponent loses their turn. They had it coming.

The rules for the Wildwords Scrabble variant are actually quite simple, and are perfectly described on the game's official web page. They even host a short video tutorial (streaming) and a sample game in case you're still skeptical. But how could you be?

Wildwords is available is on sale now on the game's official website. G*e it a go!

March 27, 2006

Spice up your Scrabble with Wildwords