Lexicon Crossing
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A word-list thingy game
Based on, like, Scrabble™, Bananagram™, our brains, and stuff
The concept
taglines...
- Make the words you always wanted to make
- fantastic words for fun and profit
Players create the highest scoring crossword that they can with their available letters.
Lexicon Crossing is perhaps most similar to the scrabble variants "Take Two" or Speed Scrabble, or it's commercial cousin Bananagram™. From these it draws it's most basic gameplay, but is scored uniquely. This scoring sets it apart from the speed of Bananagram and Scrabble, and brings forth an emphasis on longer words, along with the re-use of rarer letters - so encouraging wider vocabulary use. This is in direct contrast to my observed results of playing Speed Scrabble and the like...
Requirements
- A set of Scrabble™ tiles
- At time of writing, all testing has been done with a scrabble set of 98 letters (no blanks), but see the "LC120" section below for proposed alternative
- A large amount of workspace for each player
- my 50x73cm test (coffee table) was found suitable for a 2player game, though larger (perhaps 50x100 would have been ideal)
Setup
- The tiles are placed face down and shuffled (excluding blanks)
- Players draw the required amount of tiles.
- The left over tiles are set to the side to draw throughout the game.
Starting tiles
These are based on the 98 letter tiles in a scrabble tile set.
- Two player - 25 tiles each (leaves 48 in the pile - up to 24 rounds)
- Three player - 20 tiles each (leaves 38, ~13 rounds)
- Four player - 15 tiles each (leaves 38, ~10 rounds)
It is not viable to play more than 4 players on a single scrabble set, as approx 15 tiles are needed to start, and around 10 rounds to have decent game play. The LC120 tile set scales to 5 players by this guideline (15 tiles each to start = 75, leaves 45 for ~9 rounds of play). Naturally, if multiple scrabble tile sets are added, then more players are viable. Scale proportionally.
Play
- Once the game begins, all players work simultaneously on their individual crosswords.
- Once a player uses all their tiles, they can call "green light" which is the signal for all players to draw from the pile.
- All players draw one tile only.
- At any time during a turn, all other players (ie, who did not call 'Green Light' most recently) have the additional option of returning a tile from their set, and drawing one from the pile. This is "jaywalking" can be performed only once per 'green light' round. It should be politely announced, but does not otherwise interrupt gameplay of other players.
- Lexiconical rule justification: Those who 'green light' obey the law - and thus do not jaywalk :)
- Once that new tile is incorporated into the crossword, the cycle continues.
- This goes on and on until the pile is exhausted and one player has added all their tiles into the crossword. They then call "red light" to stop the game.
- Red light may also be called if the number of tiles available in the pile is fewer than the number of players.
- Scores are then tallied and the winner is the player with the highest calculated result.
End game
When to call "Red Light"?
In social friendly games, it's easy to hold off on calling a red light till everyone has finalised their tiles "naturally". This is fine - but be aware that any given tile set has a theoretical best - so this gives advantage to the person with the best tiles.
Otoh, enforcing a "all action halts at the instant of 'Red Light'" is unfair to those who have not finished first.
The end-game handling should be agreed upon before the game begins. A proposal for 'competition grade' play is to allow a limited period of time after red light in which tiles may be reshuffled, and a second time window where excess tiles may be added but no reshuffling is allowed. For eg, 30 seconds/30 seconds.
Rules
- All words made must be valid by some prior agreement of what constitutes "valid". For example - a local dictionary, or valid Scrabble™ words list.
- There are no limitations on word repetition, minimum or maximum length
- All words on the players board must be connected
Scoring
- Tiles that are at the intersection of two words are scored by summing their Scrabble tile values. Ignore leftover tiles at this stage.
- To clarify: you only score tiles that are used in 2 words, but count the point value once.
- eg: if KEYBOARD was crossed with 'CAKE', BED and RUBBISH, then the points for K(5), B(3) and R(1) would be added to a 9 point total
- Points are then divided by the total number of words to come up with the final calculated score. And remember those leftover tiles? Every leftover tile counts as an extra word!
- 9 points divided by 4 words (KEYBOARD, CAKE, BED, RUBBISH) = 2.25
- A calculator is handy for scoring as 1 or 2 decimal places may be required to differentiate in close games
- Display of scores should be in the form of points/words=score. In this way, a sense of the game can also be determined
- This is not entirely dissimilar to the manner in which AFL scores are given with a goal and behind breakdown.
Example
The first two games tested resulted in the following scores
- 52 points / 17 words = 3.06 final score beat
- 66 points / 25 words = 2.64 final score
- 70 points / 19 words = 3.68 final score beat
- 49 points / 16 words = 3.06 final score
These two games demonstrate the winning strategies of both fewer words and higher points (or alternatively, that it's possible to lose despite having more points, and despite having fewer words!)
Tactics
- Maximise the scoring letter values - ie, intersect words on the high point scorers.
- Minimise the number of short words.
- Only a very few short words make sense to use: Adding 'R' inside a corner to make OR and AR is counterproductive (+4 points /2 words, net result is a score of 2 - likely to bring your score down. Even 'W' to make OW and AW only gains +6 points for /2 words - an average of 3. Finally, OX and AX nets +10points for /2 words. 5 point scoring average is very likely worthwhile!
- Take the time to rearrange your crossword when you see better opportunities. Words can be moved at any time.
- Remember, you don't HAVE to call 'green light'... take advantage of a completed board to consider alterations!
- Reduced tile sets (ie, 3 and 4 person games) gives lower final scores, so if you play 2-for-1 jaywalking (see below), it may be advantageous to aggressively jaywalk to get more options.
Advantages over Scrabble™
- Play is simultaneous.
- Not limited by word length
- Tiles can be rearranged during play
- No board required
- Whilst Scrabble encourages targeting set positions on the board to gain points, Lexicon Crossing targets the tiles in the context of your own hand.
- Scrabble, Bananagram, etc, encourage short words (in Scrabble by the use of parallel words giving rise to multiple point scoring per tile, and in Bananagram due to it being a speed game) Some variants of Speed Scrabble forbid two letter words, but as demonstrated above, Lexicon Crossing needs no such restriction as it encourages longer words due to the scoring mechanism.
Disadvantages
- Play is not on a communal board, so the 'enforced' social and competitive interaction of Scrabble is lost. Actual interaction in play is dependant on players and can vary widely.
House Variations
These have been though of and recognised as variations that people may find more to their taste/style/etc. Some of these are based on earlier revisions of LC as the game was refined, and may be useful if a faster game is desired.
- Varying the number of starting tiles (up to a maximum where all tiles are divided evenly. Remember: the number of rounds is normally the number of remaining tiles divided by the number of players)
- lower than 15 is not recommended
- up to 8 players
- 6 players = 15 each + 1 round
- 7 players = 12 tiles each + 2 rounds only
- 8 players = 12 tiles each, time challenge only
- Allow two tiles per green light. (faster game)
- Jaywalking rule variations
- disallow entirely
- relax the limitations on how often, and/or which players may jaywalk (faster)
- Allow a 2-for-1 pickup. (ie, return one, pick up two) (faster)
"out of the house" Variations
Many of the best games can be used as easy foundations for new games. For example, drinking versions, strip versions, etc, as well as simple house rule variations on the basic rule set.
These are not official game rules, but give an idea of how the game can be expanded upon to the point of more or less being whole new games (though clearly still with LC origins). Should the game take off, I'm sure other variants will arise! :)
Team Play?
Two forms of team play are proposed.
- Each team works on a shared set of words and tiles.
- With two players per team, player maintains their own board, but may swap one tile with their team member per green light. In this way one team member can angle for best possible point scoring, whilst the other team member may angle for first Red Light, etc.
- This would be for four players only, given the tile limitations of the standard scrabble set, though with more tiles, could scale appropriately
- Scoring? Best score for the team? Combined scoring? Average of scores? (the same thing?). Best "lowest" score for the team.
Drinking LC
- Take a sip as "payment" to jaywalk
- Call "Green Light" to make everyone ELSE take a sip
- The green lighter may be challenged - and has to finish/take a drink for every invalid word they have. If all words are correct, then the challenger finishes their drink
- On red light - everyone who doesn't finish a completed board must take a drink. All invalid words also incur a drink
Strip LC
Spell an item of clothing to make the other player(s) take them off.
- Regular version: apply to all players at the end of the game
- Slow version: apply only from the winning board
- Speed version: apply on every green light (only the player calling 'green light' however)
LC120 / LC160
The LC120 is a proposed 120tile set that differs from the standard scrabble set, though the letter scorings are the same. It is not a superset of the scrabble set since it has fewer "I"s. It can be created as a subset of 3 scrabble sets (this due to K and Z tripling in count)
LC160 extends this to a 160 tile set, and can be made as a subset of four(?) scrabble sets.
Current proposal for the LC120 (and the variance from the Scrabble98) is:
LC120 S98 variance LC160 A 11 +2 14 B 2 3 C 3 +1 5 D 4 6 E 15 +3 16 F 2 4 G 3 4 H 3 +1 8 I 7 -2 10 J 2 +1 2 K 3 +2 3 L 4 6 M 3 +1 4 N 8 +2 9 O 9 +1 11 P 2 3 Q 2 +1 2 R 7 +1 8 S 6 +2 8 T 8 +2 14 U 4 5 V 2 3 W 2 4 X 2 +1 2 Y 3 +1 4 Z 3 +2 2
It is hoped that the greater proportion of high-point scoring letters reduces the affect of random chance in game outcome (in a two player S98 game, someone who gets 3 of the 4 8/10 point tiles, is very hard to beat! LC120 has a 20% increase in tile count, but a 100% increase in tiles that score 5, 8 or 10!
LC120 scales easily to 5 players and (yet to be tested) has improved letter distribution. LC160 scales to 6 players. As of writing, both are untested. LC160 may less suitable for two player games simply due to tile overload. (thus?: S™98 = 2-4 players, LC120 = 2-5 players, LC160 = 3-6 players)
Notes/misc
- Expect a 2 player game to take between half an hour and an hour. In general, game length is determined by the number of rounds, so adjust round length (see House Variations above) to suit.
- Needs more play testing on 3 and 4 person games
- Need to playtest a jaywalking variant where returned tiles are left face-up and may be claimed by any other placer at any time (without having to return a tile to do so). This could be especially relevant to tactics in 3 and 4 player games where jaywalking to increase personal tile count is preferable as more tiles increases the chance of a better score.
- With only a little practice, scoring between 3.50 and 4.50 should be common for an average Scrabble player. However, this scoring method can achieve a theoretical score greater than 10 (imagine a 4x4 grid of words that uses the top 16 point scoring tiles. 84/8=10.5). The best possible score whilst being restricted to valid words is unknown. In real world play, 5+ is likely to be possible, but I doubt 6 would be achievable.
