QUIDDLER

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OBJECTIVE OF QUIDDLER:  Be the player with the highest score at the end of the game

NUMBER OF PLAYERS: 2 – 8 players

NUMBER OF CARDS: Two 59 card Quiddler decks

TYPE OF GAME: Rummy 

AUDIENCE: Kids, Adults

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INTRODUCTION OF QUIDDLER

Quiddler is a word building Rummy style game from Play Monster.  In this game, each card consists of one or more letters.  Players are challenged to be the first player to build words with the cards in their hand.  Similar to Straight Gin, players must use every letter in their hand to build one or more words.  The first player to do this wins the round. keonhacai

This is the perfect game for lovers of both card games and the English language.  For those who are not so linguistically inclined, a dictionary is allowed to be referenced while players are not taking their turn.  Play Monster even has an official Quiddler reference dictionary available for those who want to incorporate it into their gameplay.

THE CARDS & THE DEAL

Quiddler is played with two 59 card decks.  There are one or more cards for each letter in the alphabet as well as letter combinations such as th and in.

Determine who is to be the first dealer.  They shuffle all of the cards together and deal 3 cards to each player one at a time.  Each round, the number of cards dealt to each player will increase by 1.  The final round consists of a 10 card hand.   

The rest of the cards are placed in the center of the playing space as the draw pile.  Flip the top card over to begin the discard pile.

MELDS

Word melds must use at least two cards.  All words are allowed except for proper nouns, prefixes, suffixes, abbreviations, and hyphenated words.

THE PLAY

Play begins with the player on the left side of the dealer and moves left around the table.  Each turn begins with a card being drawn.  Players may draw the top card from the draw pile or the discard pile and add it to their hand.  Any words that a player is able to build stay in that player’s hand until they are able to go out.  A player ends their turn by discarding a single card to the discard pile.

Play like this continues until a player is able to go out.  A player can go out once every card in their hand is part of a word.  After discarding, the player lays down their hand to display their words.  Players can only use the same number of cards that they were originally dealt.  The final discard must occur.

Once a player goes out, each player gets one more turn.  They begin their turn by drawing a card, play as many words to the table as possible, and discard a card to end their final turn.  A player must discard on their final turn.

Once the round ends, it’s time to tally up the score.  

SCORING

Players earn points for the words they were able to create and lose points for leftover letters.  Each card has a point value on it, and the player earns those points if they use the card in a word.  The points from the unused cards are then subtracted from that score.  A player’s total score cannot go below zero.

Bonus points are also awarded each round.  The player with the longest word earns 10 points.  The longest word includes the most letters and not just the most cards.  

There is also a 10 point bonus each round for the player who built the most words.  

If two or more players earned the bonus, nobody gets the points.

WINNING

After the final round, the player with the highest score wins the game.