WordSpiel Card Game: Rules for How to Play

Setup

Choose a player to be the dealer.
The dealer shuffles all of the cards. After shuffling they will deal one card at a time facedown to the players in a clockwise direction. Each player receives a total of ten cards.
Place the rest of the cards facedown in the middle of the table.
All of the players look at their cards and organize them however they prefer.
When everyone is done looking at their cards, the dealer flips over the top card from the pile in the middle of the table.
The player to the left of the dealer starts the game.

How to Play WordSpiel

You will play WordSpiel over five rounds.

The current player has 60 seconds for their turn. You can either use the included timer, or use another timer that you can set to 60 seconds.

The first player looks at the card in the middle of the table. They will have to create a word that starts with that letter. They can use as many cards as they want from their hand to create a word. There is no limit to the number of letters you can use from your hand, but it is beneficial to use as many letters as possible.

Creating the first word — An A card was placed on the table as the first card. The first player decides to play their L, I, E, and N card along with the A to create the word alien.

You have 60 seconds to create your word and lay out the cards you want to play. After you play your cards, your turn ends. Play passes to the player on your left/clockwise.

After the first word is formed, players look at all of the cards already played to the table. You can either form a new word with just the last played letter, or you can use any number of the letters already played to the table. You must use the letters in the order they were played to the table though. Add any letters from your hand to the end of the line of letters in order to spell out your word.

Create second word — The second player decides to use both the E, and N that have already been played to the table. They add the letters E, R, G, and Y from their hand to create the word energy.

Eventually the line of letters will get pretty long. The game recommends you spiral the cards around the draw pile.

Word Rules

There are a few rules that you must follow when creating words.

You can create any word. Commonly used abbreviations are also allowed. You can use dictionaries and other resources to find words, and spell them properly.

The following are not allowed in WordSpiel:

Contractions (won’t, don’t, can’t)
Acronyms (ASAP)
Hyphenated words (part-time)
Proper nouns – Names of people, places, and things that start with a capital letter (Eric, Lego, Canada)
Abbreviations that represent proper nouns (CA, USA, Wed)

If you think a player created a word that doesn’t exist or a word that breaks one of the above rules, you can challenge the word. If you are correct and the word couldn’t be played, the player picks up the cards they played and draws one card from the draw pile.

Can’t Create a Word

You have 60 seconds in order to come up with and play a word on your turn. If you are unable to come up with a word or you run out of time, you will draw the top card from the draw pile. Before you look at the letter on the card, you can choose one of two options for the new card.

Add the card to your hand.
Place the card at the end of the line of cards. If you choose this option the letter doesn’t have to create a word, the next player has to use it to create a word though.

If the draw pile ever runs out of cards, take all of the cards except for the letters used to form the last two words. Shuffle the cards to form a new draw pile.

Changing Letter Cards

If you don’t like some of your cards, you can swap out up to three of them each round. You can either trade out cards before the round begins, or you can swap cards when it is not your turn.

When you want to get rid of a card, you will place it facedown in front of you. You will then draw the top card from the draw pile and add it to your hand.

Changing letter cards — This player has decided to change two of their letter cards. They place the cards facedown in front of themselves, and draw two new cards.

End of Round

A round ends as soon as a player plays the last card from their hand.

Each player counts up the number of cards left in their hand. Each card is worth one point. You should write down your score so you can tally your final score at the end of the game.

Scoring points at the end of a round — This player had three cards left in their hand at the end of the round. They will score three points this round.

The role of dealer moves one player to the left. The dealer shuffles all of the cards. They will deal out ten cards to each player to start the next round.

Winning WordSpiel

After the players have completed five rounds, the game ends. Each player totals the points they scored in each round. The player that has scored the least points in the game, wins WordSpiel.

Components

110 Cards
Timer
Instructions

Year: 2017 | Publisher: Set Enterprises | Designer: Marsha J. Falco | Artist: Marsha J. Falco

Genres: Card, Family, World

Ages: 8+ | Number of Players: 2-6 | Length of Game: 45 minutes

Difficulty: Light | Strategy: Light-Moderate | 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.