KEEPING SCORE

One player is elected as scorekeeper. They may also take part in the game. The scorekeeper keeps tally of each players score, entering it after each round.

TO BEGIN PLAYING

All the tiles are placed on a flat surface, face down. Each player chooses eight tiles, which they slide to a position immediately in front of them, making sure that the tiles remain face down.

When all the players have received their eight tiles and are ready to play, the scorekeeper announces, “Start to play” and all the players turn their tiles face up and immediately begin to try to create words with their tiles. If more than one word is created the words must join together in crossword fashion incorporating them with existing tiles.

Once a player has used up all eight of their tiles to create a word or words they announce it to the other players by saying “Take 2”. Then all the players must immediately take two more tiles from the centre and these tiles are now also to be used to make words including the original eight tiles.

Each player may try to add the new letters onto their existing words or they may choose to start again and make completely new words with all their letters, if they believe that this tactic may enable them to get to a position where they can announce “Take 2” also.

Once a player has used up all ten of their tiles to create a word or words they also announce it to the other players by saying “Take 2”. Then all the players must again take two more tiles and try to make words by incorporating them with their existing tiles.

If at any stage the players feel that they have reached a stalemate and cannot use all their tiles to be able to say “Take 2”, then if all agree, two more tiles may be taken to keep the game flowing.”

This process continues until all the tiles in the centre, have been taken by the players. When one of the players has then used all their tiles to make words they announce it to the other players by saying, "FINISHED” and then all play must immediately stop. This is the end of the first round.

SCORING

The person with all their tiles used at the end of the round, receives a score of zero. All the other players add up the number value on the tiles that they did not use. If at the end of a round a player is found to have an incorrect word in their used tiles then that player is penalized by having 25 points added to their existing score.

PERMITTED WORDS

Any words that are listed in a standard English dictionary are permitted except those requiring hyphens and apostrophes or spelt with abbreviations, suffixes and prefixes. Foreign words in a standard English dictionary are considered to have been absorbed into the English language and are permitted. A player can play the same word more than once in a round and pluralised words are allowed. The dictionary can only be consulted at the end of a round to verify if used words are permitted.

CONTENTS OF THE GAME

There are 117 tiles with letters of the alphabet and 3 blank tiles. Each tile has a score value (the number to the top right of the letter). The blank tile has no score value, but can be used as any letter needed.