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Word Seeds

No. of Players: 2+
Type of Game: written
What you need: pen and paper

Goal

To create words from groups of letters.

How to play

To play this word game, players are given a previously prepared list of twelve groups of letters: four groups of four letters, four groups of three, and four groups of two. This list can be put together by one person, or through a group effort where each player contributes a group of letters in turn. These letter-groups are the 'seeds' from which words will 'grow:' each player writes down one word for each of these letter-groups within a specified amount of time. The winner is the player with the longest list, or if each player comes up with twelve words, the player with the highest letter total is the winner. Additional points can be given for words that contain the letter-groups multiple times. Game difficulty can be increased or eased by adjusting the proportion of longer to shorter letter-groups. For instance, the list may contain eight four-letter groups, two three-letter groups, and two two-letter groups) or by adjusting the total number of letter-groups. Alternatively, a single prefix (or suffix) can be chosen to see how many words can be made that start (or end) with those letters.

Example

Aaron prepares this list of letter-groups for Bobbi and Christian:

CANT, THRE, HARA, RTAN
ENT, TIO, EDT, AND
HA, TO, IS, ES

Bobbi's list with letter point totals:

recant 6
threaten 8
characteristic 14
spartan 7
authentic 9
redistribution 14
hundredth 9
understandable 14
shareholder 11
intolerable 11
misleading 10
expressionless 28

Bobbi finishes with a total of 141 points, greatly helped by expressionless which earns her a double score since it contains ES twice.

Christian's list:

vacant 6
three 5
sharable 8
importance 10
unpretentious 13
approximation 13
bedtime 7
grandmother 11
supercharger 12
tortoise 16
chemistry 9
investment 10

Christian also earns a double score with tortoise, but only finishes with a total of 117 points which is not enough to beat his opponent.

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