Better Letters

Better Letters is a curious word game where over six rounds each players make up words using a grid. But the grid isn’t the letters themselves… it’s the rules.

Each player takes a sheet – supplied – and a pen or pencil to write with. The rules cards are shuffled and dealt into a 3×3 grid. A timer is started: everyone now has one minute to choose a word, inspired by the grid. Each rule is optional, but the more of them you follow, the more points you’ll potentially score. A rule might be that your word ‘Starts with a T’ or ‘Ends with an H’ or ‘Doesn’t have a C’. Or even ‘Contains OO’ or ‘Is one syllable’. Apart from the rules, your word can be as long or as short or as esoteric as you like. The catch with the rules is that any you follow must be adjacent on the board: after the minute is up all players will place markers on the board showing which rules their word follows, and all your markers must connect to each other. So in our above examples, if we came up with the word Tooth we’d be following all of those rules but the rules would have to be connected on the board for us to score them all.

How much they score depends on both the rule itself, and how many people use it. Each rule has a points value and any shared rule – used by more than one player – loses a point. Players write down their words simultaneously, lay their markers one at a time, and then score them openly so everyone can see what everyone’s doing. Additionally, each player has some personal rules that score only for that player: these are revealed – if achieved – at the end of the round, and you can optionally draw more as well. Any uncompleted personal rules at the end of the game are minus a point, however.

After scoring any unused rules can points markers on them – they’re now more valuable – and all used rules are discarded as a new grid is dealt. After two rounds of 3×3 there’s two rounds of 3×4 and finally two rounds of 4×4! After all that, the player with the most points is the winner.