PLAYED FOR YOU

Kreuzwort

Dice for letters to enter

Everybody knows crossword puzzles, but here we play crossword dice, but without black boxes in the grid. Each player is given a sheet showing a grid of 5x5 boxes. In turn the active player rolls all five dice – one orange, one yellow, one white and one green letter die and one black die carrying six combinations of two colors in the colors of the letter dice. The result of the black dice determines the valid letter dice for the round; each player chooses one of the two letters showing on the dice in the colors given by the black die and enter this letter into their grid into any empty box of their choice. Contrary to a standard crossword puzzle the letters need not result in a valid word or make sense in each direction. The question mark on the white die can replace any letter with the exception of diphthongs and ß; those letters in words are replaced by ss, ae, oe and ue, that is, you need two dice results for a word with those letters. After 25 dice rolls and entering of the corresponding letters all rows and columns are scored. You score the longest word in every row from left to right and in every column from top to bottom, adhering to the usual Duden rules for flections and spelling. Words of two letters are worth one point, words of three letters 3 points, words with four letters six points and for a word with five letters you score ten points.

Kreuzwort is a mixture of chance and vocabulary; it takes some time to get used to the not-all-directions-need-to-be-correct rules and you must actively neglect or destroy some rows or columns in favor of others, but the deciding factors are the dice results.

Players: 1-4

Age: 8+

Time: 20+

Designer: Bernhard Lach, Uwe Rapp

Artist: Bluguy Grafikdesign

Price: ca. 10 Euro

Publisher: Kosmos 2013

Web: www.kosmos.de

Genre: Dice, vocabulary

Users: For families

Special: 1 player

Version: de

Rules: de

In-game text: no

Comments:

Pretty, compact box

Can be played with more than four players

Dice results are dominant, a good vocabulary is helpful

Compares to:

All word-forming games using randomly selected letters

Other editions:

Currently none

Chance (pink): 3

Tactic (turquoise): 0

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 3

Knowledge (yellow): 3

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 0

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0