GAME OF THE MONTH: Word Swirl

This is the first installment of what I hope will be a fun series. I’ll be designing a game each month, and posting the rules here. They’ll generally be short, simple, solo-only games that require just you, a sheet of paper, and something to write with (maaaybe dice but if so only occasionally).

I hope they’ll be as good of a diversion for you as this one was for me. Games are the best kind of distractions.

This month’s game is called Word Swirl. It’s a solo game that plays in five to ten minutes. I put a poll at the bottom of this article for you to compare your score with others. Also, please feel free to leave a comment with rules questions, strategic musings, or any other thoughts about the game.

SETUP

Grab a piece of paper and a pencil or pen. Then draw a 5x5 grid. That’s it!

OBJECTIVE

There is no win-lose condition in this game: the goal is simply to score as many victory points as possible.

GAMEPLAY

Over the course of the game you will fill your grid with letters in a “swirl” pattern like so:

To start, write a letter in the middle box. If that letter is a word, like ‘A’ or ‘I’, write the word below your grid (I’ll call this the word zone).

Then write another letter above it. Write down all words now present on your grid that use the letter you just wrote.

Example: Matt writes an ‘A’ in the middle box to start the game, adding his first word, ‘A’, to his word zone. He then writes an ‘M’ above the ‘A’, forming ‘AM’ and ‘MA’. He writes these in his word zone as well. A good start!

Words can be formed orthogonally, diagonally, forwards and backwards; however, they must use all of the letters in that row/column/diagonal. Words may only be written in the word zone once (you can have them in your grid multiple times, though).

Example: A few turns later, Matt writes an ‘R’ beneath the ‘A’ he began with. He writes ‘RAM’, ‘MAR’, and ‘OR’ in his word zone. ‘RA’ is a legal word; however, Matt does not put this in his word zone because it does not use all the letters in that column.

Continue writing letters in your grid in the swirl pattern and adding words to your word zone until each box in your 5x5 grid has a letter in it. This marks the end of the game.

SCORING

Your final score is the total number of letters in your word zone (you may repeat letters).

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I’m interested to hear how your game went! As promised, here’s the poll:

Thanks so much for playing. I’ll be back next month with something else short, random, and hopefully fun.