I like word games. Boggle is a favorite, and Scrabble is also enjoyable…except for the time it takes, waiting (snoozing…) while others take 8.5 minutes to decide to put down the word “CRAB” over the Triple Word Score box you had planned to use for “QUIXOTIC.”
But there is a fast-pace variant of Scrabble called Take-One, where everyone is playing at once, using the Scrabble tiles but no board. A description (slightly edited) from Wikipedia:
Take-One is played without a board. Tiles are placed face down in the middle of the table. Players draw from these communal letters trying to build words with their personal tiles in front of them (each player starts with 7, drawn face down from the pool). Words can be built by rearranging tiles you’ve drawn and by playing through pre-existing words as if they were playing Solitaire Scrabble. If a player plays all of the tiles in front of them, they call “Take One”, and everybody takes one tile, continuing to build out your “personal” down-and-across structure of words. Play continues until there are no more tiles left to draw, and someone uses up all their letters. Count up the value of your tiles/words just as in regular Scrabble (no double/triple values, as there is no board), and any players with unused tiles left over deduct those point values from their score.
So, if you like word games but want more “action” and a higher pulse rate, try Take-One!
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