Shenanigrams Board Game: Rules for How to Play

Setup

Each player takes a privacy shield.
Shake the tiles inside the bag. Each player then draws five tiles from the bag and places them behind their privacy shield. During the game you can only look at your own letter tiles.
Each player chooses a color and takes a number of tags matching their chosen color. The number of tags each player takes depends on the number of players:
- 2 players – 7 tags
- 3 players – 6 tags
- 4 players – 5 tags
- 5 or 6 players – 4 tags
To determine the first player, all of the players randomly draw one tile from the bag. The player that draws the tile closest to Z starts the game. All tiles players draw at this time are returned to the bag.

How to Play Shenanigrams

To start the game the first player chooses one of their letter tiles to place in the middle of the table. They will then draw a new letter tile from the bag, and place it behind their shield. Play then passes clockwise/left.

Placing the first tile — The first player decided to play an A tile as the first tile in the game.

After the first tile is placed, the players take turns placing tiles. On each turn a player chooses one tile to play. They must play their chosen tile next to one of the tiles already played to the table. You can play a tile above, below, left or right of a tile already on the table. The players are basically creating a grid of letters similar to Scrabble/crossword puzzle.

Placing a tile — The players have placed a few tiles on the table. Going from the left to the right the players are creating a word like angle. With the “no” the players could create a word such as nothing or snow. For “ol” the players could create old.

You cannot insert tiles between two other tiles or replace any tiles unless you are changing an already completed word (see the Stealing a Word section below). You are never allowed to rearrange tiles that have been played to the table.

When choosing what tile to play, it either has to complete a word with the tiles already on the table or it has to be working towards completing a real word. If a player(s) don’t know what word you are trying to form with the letter tile you played, you have to reveal the word. If the word is not real or is breaking one of the rules regarding playable words, you have to take the tile back and you lose your turn.

Changing a word — The players were originally creating the word angle going from left to right. One of the players added a t to the left of the word. They are allowed to add the letter since the word tangle could still be created.

When creating words you can use any words found in a standard dictionary except for the following:

Abbreviations
Proper Nouns
Words that use hyphens or apostrophes.

While you will usually be adding tiles to the table to form new words, it is also possible to steal words that have already been completed. See the Stealing a Word section below for more details.

If you can’t find a letter to play, you can choose to discard all five of your letter tiles and draw five new tiles. If you take this action, you will lose your turn. Should the tile bag ever be close to running out of tiles, you will take any discarded tiles and return them to the bag.

After you have played a tile, your turn ends. Play passes to the next player clockwise/left.

Tagging A Word

After you have placed a tile, you will look to see if that tile completed a word. If it completed a word, you will take one of your tags and place it on the word to indicate that you finished that word.

To tag a word it has to be at least three letters long. The word has to read from left to right, or top to bottom.

Stealing a Word

Once a word has been tagged, a player can steal it on a future turn. You can steal a word in three different ways.

First you can steal a word if you can add a tile to the beginning or end of the word to change it into a new word.

Stealing a word by adding a letter — The blue player had previously created the word “old” and placed their tag on the word. The green player added a g to create “gold”. They remove the blue tag from the word and add their own green tag to the word.

Next you can change out one of the letters from a completed word with one of the letters behind your shield. The new letter has to be a different letter than the letter it is replacing. For example you can’t replace an A tile with another A tile. You will discard the old letter tile, and replace it with the new letter tile. You can only do this on completed words.

Stealing a word by replacing a letter — The red player had a S tile so they replace the G with it. This changes the word from gold to sold. The red player removes the green tag, and replaces it with one of their red tags.

Finally you can add a letter into a completed word. When you add a letter, you will shift the tiles from the word to slide in the new letter. You can only insert letters into completed words.

Stealing a word by inserting a letter — The blue player had an I tile. They decide to add it to sold to turn the word into solid. The D tile is slid down so the I can be placed in the word. Since the blue player changed the word, they will place their tag on the word and remove the red tag.

When stealing a word, you must create a different word. You cannot add, change or insert tiles that takes a completed word, and turns it into a word that still needs more letters to be complete.

When you successfully steal a word, you will remove the previous owner’s tag and return it to them. You will then place one of your tags on the word you stole.

It is possible to steal two words on the same turn. The new letter has to work for both words, or you can’t add/change the letter.

Stealing two words in one turn — The green player had an E tile that they have chosen to play to replace the A tile in great and and. The E changes great into greet and “and” into end. Both are valid words so the placement is allowed. The green player replaces both the yellow and red tags with their own tags.

If you change a letter tile that is used by a complete word and an incomplete word, the new letter has to create a new word for the completed word. The letter also has to be able to used to create a word with the letters already played for the incomplete word.

Changing a letter in a complete and incomplete word — The current player has decided to replace the E tile in dare with a K. This is allowed because dare becomes dark. A word such as okay can still be created with the “ka”.

When stealing words, players can use previously created words. Let’s take the word game for example. Someone replaces the G on game with an F to create fame. On a future turn a player can replace the F with a G again to turn it back into game. In each case the player who added the last letter to the word gets to place their tag on the word.

Winning the Game

If you are able to place your last tag on a completed word, you will shout out Shenanigrams. You will then start a countdown from five.

The next player then has five seconds to try and steal one of the previous player’s words preventing them from winning the game. If they are able to steal one of the player’s words in time, the game continues. The next player in clockwise direction then takes their turn normally.

If the player is unable to steal one of the player’s words within five seconds, the player that has played all of their tags wins Shenanigrams.

Winning Shenanigrams — The green player has placed their fifth tag on a word. The green player wins the game unless the next player is able to steal one of their words within five seconds.

Components

120 Letter Tiles
Tile Bag
42 Tags
6 Privacy Shields
Instructions

Year: 2023 | Publisher: Happy Yeti Games

Genres: Family, Tile Placement, Word

Ages: 8+ | Number of Players: 2-6 | Length of Game: 15-30 minutes

Difficulty: Light | Strategy: Light | Luck: Moderate

For more board and card game rules/how to plays, check out our complete alphabetical list of card and board game rules posts.

Written By:

Eric Mortensen

Eric Mortensen is an owner and head writer on Geeky Hobbies since 2014. He is an avid board game player and collector with over 3,000 board and card games in his collection. Since 2014 he has written more than 1,100 board game how to play guides.