BuyWord

Last updated
BuyWord
Designer(s) Sid Sackson
Players 1-4
Playing time 30 minutes +
Skill(s) required Counting, Vocabulary, Dice Rolling
Throughout this article, the unqualified use of the currency denomination "$" refers to play money in the context of the game.

BuyWord is a letter arrangement word game by American designer Sid Sackson. It is published by Face2Face Games.

Word games are spoken or board games often designed to test ability with language or to explore its properties.

Sid Sackson was an American board game designer and collector, best known as the creator of the business game Acquire.

Contents

Equipment

Dice throwable object with multiple resting positions, used for generating random outcomes

Dice are small throwable objects that can rest in multiple positions, used for generating random numbers. Dice are suitable as gambling devices for games like craps and are also used in non-gambling tabletop games.

Banknote Form of physical currency made of paper, cotton or polymer

A banknote is a type of negotiable promissory note, made by a bank, payable to the bearer on demand. Banknotes were originally issued by commercial banks, which were legally required to redeem the notes for legal tender when presented to the chief cashier of the originating bank. These commercial banknotes only traded at face value in the market served by the issuing bank. Commercial banknotes have primarily been replaced by national banknotes issued by central banks.

Rules

The money is sorted into denominations and $200 are dealt to each player. Players are issued a certain number of wild tiles each, depending on the number of players. Letter tiles are placed in the bag.

On each game turn, each player performs the following operations:

  1. Buy (or discard) a set of letters from the bag.
  2. Sell any number of words (including none).
  3. Discard down to no more than eight tiles in hand.

Players take it in turn to act as leader. The leader rolls the die to determine how many tiles will be drawn from the bag by each player that round. If the die indicates "choice" the leader chooses any number from two to five tiles.

Having drawn tiles from the bag, players in turn decide to either purchase or discard those tiles. The cost of a set of tiles is equal to the square of the number of pips showing in the set. Tiles must be purchased or discarded as a set; players may not purchase some of the drawn tiles and not others. Discarded tiles are removed from the game. Purchased tiles are taken into the buyer's hand.

Square (algebra) result of multiplying a number, or other expression, by itself

In mathematics, a square is the result of multiplying a number by itself. The verb "to square" is used to denote this operation. Squaring is the same as raising to the power 2, and is denoted by a superscript 2; for instance, the square of 3 may be written as 32, which is the number 9. In some cases when superscripts are not available, as for instance in programming languages or plain text files, the notations x^2 or x**2 may be used in place of x2.

After a round of tile purchases, players may sell words formed from tiles in their hands. A word may include a single wild tile, which can represent any letter. The sale price of a word is determined exactly as is the purchase price of a set of letters: as the square of the pips showing in the word. The validity of words is judged based on any standard mutually agreed to by the players ahead of time.

After all players have had the opportunity to sell words, no player may hold more than eight letter tiles in hand. Wild tiles do not count against this limit. Players must either sell words or discard tiles to adhere to this limit. Once this is done, the role of leader passes to the next player and a new round of play begins.

The game ends when players find that there are insufficient letter tiles in the bag to conduct tile purchases for the round in progress. All remaining tiles in the bag are discarded, and the round is completed without the tile buying phase.

The player with the most money at the end of the game is the winner. In the one-player game, the player simply judges his performance based on his winnings; $800-$1000 is suggested as a range to measure against.

Variants

The game rules include several suggested variants, such as auctions and trades of tiles or cash, themes to be required of all words sold, and building new words in crossword fashion.

Crossword type of puzzle in which the player uses clues to put words in a grid

A crossword is a word puzzle that usually takes the form of a square or a rectangular grid of white-and black-shaded squares. The game's goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases, by solving clues, which lead to the answers. In languages that are written left-to-right, the answer words and phrases are placed in the grid from left to right and from top to bottom. The shaded squares are used to separate the words or phrases.

Awards

BuyWord was the GAMES 100 Game of the Year in 2004.

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