Object of the Game

To score the highest number of points by placing letters on the board to form words while trying to be the first to reach the center bonus square after covering all 6 of your tiles on either the Yellow or Green pathway. Each time a square is covered by a player, the number of tiles in their rack increases by 1. After the last one is covered, that player will have 11 tiles in the rack.

The Board

The board is a 21 x 21 grid of squares into which letter tiles are placed. Some squares are designated as bonus squares. There are two paths for players to follow. The inviting player decides which player number to be. Player 1 is Yellow and will start in the upper right, covering the number 1, and heading down and then to the left along the path, player two is Green and will start in the lower left corner, covering the number 2 and working upwards and then to the right again along that path. In each case, players follow the embedded arrows. Both players may enter the blue area at any time and may even head towards the center, but not into the red-bordered square. In order to enter into that center portion, each of the player’s six squares must be covered, although they do not necessarily need to be covered in the order along the path. However, until they are all covered, that player will be denied access to the center. At no time may one player enter their opponent’s path. After a player has covered all six squares, that player can enter the center region from any point on their path.

The Letter Tiles

There are 200 letter tiles available plus four "wild" (blank) tiles that can represent any of the other letters. Once played on the board, wild tiles are no longer wild and can only be used as the letter designated by the player who first played it. However, these games all play with “Floating Blanks.” That means, if a player wants to ‘swap’ a tile in the rack for a “wild” (blank) tile of the same letter that is on the board they can use a turn to “Swap Blanks” to get the “wild” tile onto their rack. At the beginning of the game, all of these tiles are shuffled, each player is given 5 random tiles, and the remainder are placed into what is called the pool. Each letter tile has a point value assigned to it. The four “wild” tiles are worth zero points.