Dead Letter - a letter that is undeliverable and unreturnable by the post office

You are a postal worker staring at an intimidating pile of 'dead letters'. You and your co-workers have to deal with this pile today and have a bet on who can correctly sort the most - winner doesn't pay for the pizza. But be careful, anything you take is your responsibility and if you grab too many the next thing to die will be your free time!

Dead Letters is a push-your-luck word game where players grab as many letters as they dare and try to make a word out of them. Each letter is worth a certain number of points but . . . any letters you can't use are truly 'Dead' and will score negative points!

Print and Play

If you are interested in the game, please try the Print and Play version! 6 pages, 54 cards makes for a pretty cheap print.

Print and Play

Rules

Setup

Shuffle the deck and place it centrally. Agree upon a word reference source (default: Dictionary.com). Deal three cards to each player. The person who last sent a letter goes first.

Gameplay

Each turn, a player may do only ONE of the following:

*Draw any number of cards

*Score a word with the cards in their hand

*Pass

Drawing Cards

A player may draw any number of cards face down. They cannot look at any of them until they have decided to stopped drawing. Once they have decided to stop, they may take all drawn cards and look at them, placing them in their hand.

Scoring a Word

The player must form a word from the cards in their hand, using as many letters as they can.

Important note! The five standard vowels – 'A,E,I,O,U' are NOT in the letter deck. ANY card may be used face down as one of these five vowels! The letter 'Y' IS in the deck and cannot be replaced by a face down card, even when used as a vowel.

The word must be in an agreed upon dictionary or web reference, and proper nouns are not allowed. When a valid word is formed, the player places all cards used as consonants into a score pile face up in front of them. Any cards in their hand not used in the word as a consonant or a vowel should be placed in their score pile face down – these will count as negative points. Cards used as vowels return to your hard.

Example: Emma has B,B,C,H,J,S,X, and Y in their hand. Emma plays BECAUSE, using the X,J, and Y as the E,A,U, and 2nd E respectively.

They score the B, C, and S cards and place them in their score pile face up. They could not use the H, and place it in their score pile face down as negative points. The X, J, and Y return to Emma's hand, and their turn is over.

Challenging a Word

A player may challenge a questionable word by consulting the agreed upon reference source. If the word is not listed the player who played it must instead Draw or Pass for their turn. If the word is listed, the challenger must place a card from their hand face down on their score pile.

Pass

If a player cannot draw or form a word, they may pass.

After each turn, play continues clockwise around the table.

End of the Game

The game ends when the draw deck is empty and all players have passed consecutively. Any cards remaining in hand move to your score pile face down.

Scoring

Players add all the point values of the face up cards in their score pile. Then, subtract the point values of any face down cards in their score pile. The result is their final score, highest score wins! In the event of a tie, the player with the most face up cards wins, then the player with the least face down cards.