Anagrams is a board game which is played with tiles from another word game, such as Scrabble or Upwords. At the beginning, all tiles are turned face-down. During the game, players take turns flipping tiles face up on the table.
When a player sees a word of four or more letters among the tiles face-up in the middle, this player says the word and puts the tiles for this word in front of him/her. A player cannot create a word which is already on the table.
You can steal a word from another player by mixing all the tiles of one opponent's word with one or more in the middle, forming another word. Mere pluralization is never permitted, however, and sometimes players stipulate that the new word has to change the root of the old one. (example: APPEAR to PARAPET is fine; APPEAR or REAPPEAR is not.)
You can modify your own words, subject to the same rule, to prevent others from stealing them first.
You cannot steal a word by creating a word that is already on the table.
The game ends when all tiles are face-up and no one can create or steal any more words.
There are two distinct variants of scoring:
- Simple letter count; the player in possession of the most tiles wins.
- Sum of the squares of the lengths of the words in one's control. This rule rewards the inventive creation of large words more than it does amassing small ones.
See also: Anagram
