Typewriter

Typewriter is a word-making game that plays out over nine rounds. In each round you make a word – and choose which letters to score.

All players have a small typewriter board of their own that essentially functions as both a track and a place to store your ‘scored’ letters – called keys in the game. You begin with a bunch of keys and in each turn follow the phases shown on your board (see pics). Firstly, make a word! At the start you’ll have fewer keys to work with but some will be ‘wilds’ and there’s always a communal vowel key you can use as well. When you’ve made a word, you add up its value (-each key has a number on it) and move a marker that far up your typewriter track. Then you can optionally ‘spend’ this progress by moving the marker back to zero, and cashing in on one each of the special abilities it has reached: one orange, one green, and one purple. We won’t list them exhaustively here but they’re basically about getting more keys, moving keys into your ‘bank’ and from your ‘bank’ to your ‘star’ pile. Both bank and star are keys that you’ll score at the end of the game – the only difference that the bank will score all the number values and the star pile will score its’ number values and the number of stars on each key. The catch is that any keys you move onto these scoring piles are no longer available to make words with, so there’s an element of timing at play…

And also an element of planning, because every key you do use in your word now gets flipped to its other side, where it will have a different letter – or sometimes, letter combination – on it. Some keys also don’t have a letter on one side, but a special power instead. These can be used and flipped as well: allowing more track movement or banking/starring of keys. You then add a new key to your hand, and start planning your next word.

After the ninth round, players add up the values of their bank and star piles, and the player with the most points is the winner.