WildWords

I haven't played Scrabble in years—mainly because no opportunities have arisen. Every so often, Trip Payne posts about hardcore competitive Scrabble, and wow, that form of the game doesn't appeal to me at all. RENITENT, JUBHAH, OBTECTED, YAUD? Hmm, the idea of memorizing words like that makes my synapses snap shut. (Not that there's anything wrong with competitive Scrabble! It's just not for me.)

So I'm somewhat intrigued by the idea behind the WildWords game, which looks a lot like Scrabble but allows for asterisked tiles (the game includes a dozen of these tiles) or flipped-over tiles (regular tiles placed on "turn to wild" squares on the board) to be denote one or more letters. As seen in the YouTube video, V*QUIST could be played as V[ENTRILO]QUIST. A subsequent play can build off the wild tile, but it can stand for an entirely different batch of letters in the intersecting word. Seems less constrained than Scrabble, no?

There are some reviews linked at the WildWords site, and you can order the game there from "Inventor, Publisher, Sales Manager, Web Master, and Shipping Clerk" Peter Roizen.