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(More customer reviews)This is a great game for all ages, but it really helps if you're old enough to have a decent vocabulary at hand. Someone commented that the box was not a useful way to carry the game and I agree, which is why we transferred it all to a cloth bag (such as the kind that comes with Crown Royal). What I like about the game is that any number of players can play, although I can't imagine trying it with as low as two players but I suppose that you could. Each player starts with 9 tiles, face down. When everyone agrees, the players flip over their tiles and begin forming words as if they had their own Scrabble board in front of them. (TIP: plan for enough space so that you don't lay tiles down such that you may run out of room as you near the edge of the table you are playing on.)
The words you form should be valid English words, and not foreign words or proper nouns. Now, depending on your audience, you can tailor the rules to suit your needs. The words all must be connecting as they do in Scrabble. Whomever uses up their tiles yells "draw" and *all* players must draw a tile. This is where it becomes a game of speed. However, you can continually re-arrange your tiles to make room for new tiles. There's a generous serving of tiles, but they include quite a few of the more-challenging letters to use such as J, V, Z, and Q. There's also a good number of wild card tiles which help when you don't have the letter you are looking for. (TIP: As you get a tile that represents a wild card you were using, quickly substitute the wild card with the actual letter so that you free up the wild card. If you draw a wild card and have no idea where to play it, you can always look for a word that you can pluralize and make it an 's' at the end of the word.)
The game play continues and it can be frustrating if someone keeps yelling "draw" when you haven't used up a lot of your recently-drawn tiles. (TIP: when playing with kids, consider having either a 5-second rule whereby no one can yell "draw" until 5 seconds have passed. There are other ideas for handicapping, such as that adults cannot play any 2-letter words but you have to be careful about that because then people may get stuck with no moves and therefore there are no opportunities to yell "draw" and get fresh tiles to play.) Once all the tiles have been played, whomever completes their connected words first is the winner. There are no point values for the tiles or letters, so a typical way to play is to play each game individually, or play a series of games and just keep track of who wins the most games.
There are times when two people yell "draw" at the same time. In those cases, we consider it a tie and everyone only draws a single tile. There are times when the number of remaining tiles in the "pot" is less than the number of players. When that last "draw" is called, it's usually the play who called "draw" who has to ensure that they pick a tile in all fairness, especially assuming that they were calling "draw" because they were close to winning. Sometimes, that situation occurs and that person draws a tile and then there was another person who was about to yell "draw" and does not have a tile to draw, and so they are "out" and have won. In those cases, we play that if the person who drew the tile played it right away and the other person yelled "done" right away, that they can each split the victory.
All in all, this is a bang-up game for word enthusiasts. The tiles are very durable; I've never seen them chip or have the ink wear off. They are small so don't let a very little kid near them and have a chance at swallowing them. There is a kid's version of this called Bananagrams that has fewer tiles. I don't have it, but I wonder if it also has a different tile distribution so that there are not as many (if any) of the difficult letters.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Syzygy Game
This tongue-tying title is really a crazy crossword race! Fast-paced and easy to learn, it's family fun for up to a dozen players (how many games can say that?). Here's how it works: the tiles are placed face down, and each player draws nine. Then they use their tiles to build their own individual crossword puzzles, expanding and rearranging their puzzles as additional tiles are drawn. Out of tiles? Yell Draw! and everyone draws another. The first to use up their tiles stops the action, but only those with all their words spelled correctly can win the game. Instructions for several different variations (including a solitaire version) are included. For 1 to 12 players.
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