What's My Word?
What's My Word? Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Choosing Your Gameword
To begin a round, each of the two players, Purple and Red, selects a Gameword of six letters and writes it at the top of his What's My Word? game sheet in the space provided and covers it so that his opponent cannot see it. A player should not choose a Gameword that is surely unfamiliar to his opponent. In addition, proper names, foreign words and slang expressions, as well as words containing a hyphen or apostrophe, may not be used as either Gamewords or Guesswords.
If you are playing a two-round game, purple plays first in the six-letter round, and red plays first in the seven-letter round.
The Play
Purple starts the round by choosing a two-letter Guessword. He writes it in the first row of large purple squares at the bottom of his What's My Word? game sheet, and he tells it to Red who writes the Guessword in the first row of small squares in the purple area at the top of his game sheet. Red then states how many points Purple has scored, and each player records that score on the line next to where the Guessword has been written.
Now Red chooses his two-letter Guessword, and each player writes it in his designated red area; Purple then announces how many points Red has scored. The game proceeds with the players alternating turns announcing and scoring Guesswords of varying length. Even if a player discovers his opponent's Gameword before the last turn, the round still continues until all the rows of the game sheets have been filled in. The scores earned by each player for his Guesswords are then added to determine the winner.
For the second round, players choose seven-letter Gamewords and play proceeds as in the first round. At the conclusion of the second round, the scores for the round are added to the first-round totals to arrive at the grand total for each player. The player with the higher grand total is the winner.
Scoring
The score for each Guessword is computed as follows:
- First, 1000 points are scored for each letter in the player's Guessword that appears in the opponent's Gameword and falls in the same position (called a "matching" letter).
- Next, 250 points are scored for each letter in the player's Guessword that appears in the opponent's Gameword, but does not fall in the same position (called a "non-matching" letter).
- Letters in the Guessword that do not appear in the opponent's Gameword receive no score.
- On the last turn of a round, if a player correctly names his opponent's Gameword, he is awarded a bonus of 3000 points, which is added to the score for his last Guessword.
Sample Game
Purple has chosen BALLET for his Gameword, and Red has selected NEPHEW. On his first turn, Purple guesses SO and Red responds by saying "zero", for there is neither an S nor an O in NEPHEW.
Now it is Red's turn, and he announces AN. He receives a score of 250 for a non-matching letter, for there is an A in BALLET, but it is in the second position, not the first.
Purple goes and tries DEN. Red responds by announcing "twelve-fifty" (1250). This signifies one matching letter (the E in DEN falls in the same position as the E in Red's Gameword NEPHEW) and one non-matching letter (the N) scores 250.
Red guesses CAR on his next turn and scores 1000. Since he received 250 for a non-matching letter in AN at his first turn, it appears likely that the second letter of his opponent's Gameword is A. By repeating the letter A in the second position at subsequent turns, Red will be able to verify by the points scored that the second letter is indeed A.
Now look at the rest of the sample game to test your understanding of how a player is able to discover his opponent's Gameword by using different Guesswords. The sooner a player discovers his opponent's Gameword, the more points he can amass by using Guesswords with as many matching and non-matching letters as possible.
Note that on the last turn Purple guesses NEPHEW and receives 9000 points: 6000 for six matching letters plus a bonus of 3000 for naming his opponent's Gameword. Red, however, receives 5000 points for WALLET because he did not succeed in correctly guessing Purple's Gameword, but did score for five matching letters.
Sample Score Pad
The sample score pad for the Purple player records both players' Guesswords for round 1.
Red's Guesswords (against Purple's 6-letter Gameword BALLET):
| Guessword | Score |
|---|---|
| AN | 250 |
| CAR | 1000 |
| ACT | 1250 |
| TOE | 1250 |
| OLD | 250 |
| TOOT | 1000 |
| DULL | 1250 |
| 2000 | |
| PALLS | 3000 |
| ALTER | 3250 |
| WALLET | 5000 |
| Round 1 total | 19500 |
Purple's Guesswords (against Red's 6-letter Gameword NEPHEW):
| Guessword | Score |
|---|---|
| SO | 0 |
| DEN | 1250 |
| EBB | 1000 |
| INN | 250 |
| BID | 0 |
| TURN | 250 |
| EARL | 1000 |
| NEWT | 2250 |
| NEWEL | 2500 |
| ENDOW | 2250 |
| NEPHEW | 9000 |
| Round 1 total | 19750 |
Scoring Repeated Letters
In computing the opponent's points for a turn, the player must always score the number of matching letters first. In the sample game Red scores 1000 at his sixth turn for guessing TOOT, rather than 250, for only the final T of TOOT is scored; the other T receives no points because there is not a second T in BALLET. Similarly, on his next turn Red received 1250 for DULL: 1000 for the first L, which falls in matching position, but only 250 for the second L, which happens to fall under the E in BALLET. Repeated letters occurring in the Gameword or a Guessword are not confusing to score if the player remembers to count all matching letters first before seeing if any remaining letters are non-matching.
Marking Letters
To avoid misunderstandings, it is good practice for each player to spell his Guessword after he announces it. Further, it is recommended that in calculating the score for an opponent's Guessword the player circle matching letters, underline non-matching letters and cross out all other letters.
If a player gives an incorrect Guessword score, his opponent receives 2000 additional points for each turn in which the error goes undetected.
If a Guessword is misspelled or nonexistent, the opponent may accept it, or reject it — in which case another word must be offered. An incorrect Guessword that goes unnoticed after the word is scored stands as is for the remainder of the game. It is also a good idea to mark letters in one's own Guesswords in the same manner as an aid in identifying which letters are in the opponent's Gameword and which are not.
Marginal Alphabets
One more helpful device that can be used to deduce letters in the opponent's Gameword are the columns of alphabets on the What's My Word? game sheet. When a letter is found not to be present in the opponent's Gameword, the entire row of letters can be crossed out. In the sample game, Purple was able to cross out all S's and O's in his marginal alphabets when he received zero points for SO. When a letter is discovered to be present in the Gameword, but the position of the letter has not yet been determined, it is suggested that the player underline the entire row of letters. When a matching letter is revealed, it can be circled in the corresponding column of the marginal alphabets and, in addition, the remaining 25 letters in the column can be crossed out. To illustrate, when Purple was sure that the second letter of Red's concealed word was E, he circled E in the second column of this marginal alphabets and ran a line through every other letter of the alphabet in that column. Purple also wrote the letter E in the corresponding circle located above his playing area, and later he recorded N in the first circle and W in the last upon discovering the positions of these letters.
Strategy
When a player scores 1000 points and knows which letter is the matching one, he should repeat that letter in matching position whenever possible in his subsequent Guessword. It is usually not good practice, however, to constantly repeat a known letter out of matching position and score only 250. The better idea is to try to find the remaining letters in the opponent's Gameword.
When a player scores 250 points and does not know which letter is the non-matching one, it is vital on subsequent turns to establish which letter it is and then what its matching position is. Many times when a player has discovered the matching position of three — or even only two — letters, the opponent's Gameword may be revealed. Through experience at playing What's My Word? a player will become more and more skillful in learning to what degree he should alter his Guesswords so as to obtain the maximum information in the minimum number of turns.
A good choice for a Gameword is one that contains few "interior" words. Thus the word STARTS is a poor choice because the player, if he discovers the word early in the round, can make ARTS, TART, STAR, START and TARTS and score thousands of points for matching letters. Words that have unusual combinations, but not necessarily rare letters, make good Gamewords. For example, POWWOW is probably more difficult than JINXES, and EIGHTH may be a little harder than FIZZLE.
What's My Word? Variations
- Players agree to pick their Gamewords from a particular page chosen at random from a newspaper or magazine. Difficult Gamewords are invariably eliminated, and players have more fun skillfully racking up points.
- Each player's turn is limited to a minute. If he fails to announce his Guessword in this time, he earns no score for that turn.
- Players agree to accept Guesswords in both English and a designated foreign language. Or players agree to relax the rule which bars proper nouns, slang expressions and other classes of words not permitted.
- For added depth and variety the What's My Word? original edition is available, which adds a seven-letter variant and additional score pads for each player.