ALPHABETICKELL

Assemble an alphabetical sequence

20-30 minutes 2-5 players
by Andrew ‘LasBlast’ Dennison & Mick Wood

Overview
Take cards to place in an alphabetical order in
your own personal line. You can skip letters,
but can never use any letter you skipped. Think
about the letter distribution, others’ lines and the
discarded cards. When 4 cards are discarded, the
round ends and everyone scores! Play to 25+pts.
Flip another card
Setup - choose your starting cards If a card is taken by someone, the player to their
Choose a dealer. For the first round, the player whose left becomes the next dealer. I.e. The player to the left
name is earliest in the alphabet. of whoever took a card has the first ‘right of refusal’ on the
new card.
Deal each player 3 cards. Starting from the dealer
and going clockwise, choose 1 to keep face up in If everyone passes on a card, it is discarded and
front of you, starting a personal line of cards. the same dealer flips over a new card.
Shuffle the others back into the deck.
I suggest keeping a card with letters in the middle of the
Ending the round & scoring
alphabet. Anything before I or after S might be a bad choice. When 4 cards have been discarded, the round
ends. Everyone then scores. In the unlikely situation
Play a round - assembling lines that the deck runs out, you also end the round and score.
Begin the game by flipping a card face up. In Each card is worth 1 point.
turn order, clockwise starting from the dealer,
each player either passes or takes that card to add EXAMPLES:
to either end of their line. When the game begins, your [eK][iL][Nu][Oc][aP][iQ]
‘line’ is just one card. When taking your 2nd card, you must
immediately choose which letters on those 2 cards you are Maria has 6 points. Maria waited too long for the ‘K’.
using. To make it obvious, perhaps raise/lower your cards.
[AL][IB][EW][TH][IU][EL][EM][NB][OD][SC][OU]
The line of cards must be in alphabetical order
based on 1 letter from each card. Letters can be Ed gets 11 points. Ed carefully considered letter distribution.
skipped. I.e. Letters do not need to be consecutive.
No letter may be repeated. [AW][TC][SD][NF][SG][RH][TM][RW][TD]

Cards must be added only to the left and right.
Never in the middle. So, once you skip a letter, you
cannot ever take it.
[[NH][AP][SC]
EXAMPLE: Marti has the sequence ‘NPS’. Marti cannot
place another N, P or S (cannot repeat letters); and cannot
place an O, Q or R (cannot place cards into the middle of a
sequence). Marti can use any letters before N or after S.
Bez has 9 points. They sometimes skipped too many letters.
Play multiple rounds - reach 25+pts
Stop if anyone has 25 points or more. Whoever
has the most points is the winner! Congratulations!
Otherwise, start a whole new round. Whoever has
the lowest score is the starting dealer. If there is a
tie for lowest score, choose the tied player with the
name earliest in the alphabet.

For your reference: the alphabet, and letter frequency, is:

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
6 4 4 5 6 2 3 5 6 1 1 5 4 6 6 2 1 6 6 6 3 1 3 1 2 1
EXAMPLE TURNS
Kes and Cat are playing. Kes chose ‘SG’ and Cat
chose ‘AJ’ to start their personal lines.
[sg] [aj]
Kes is the first dealer and flips ‘EW’. Kes takes
it, placing it to the right to form ‘S’, ‘W’.
[Sg][eW]
As Kes took a card, Cat is the next dealer. Cat
flips ‘AM’, taking it to form ‘J’, ‘M’.
[aJ][aM]
Kes is the new dealer. They flip ‘OH’, taking it
to form ‘O’, ‘S’, ‘W’. This is almost certainly a bad
move, as they are skipping 9 cards fairly early on!
[Oh][Sg][sW]
Cat flips ‘AP’ and passes. Kes takes it, placing it
to the left of their line. This is a big mistake.
Since Kes took the last card, Cat becomes the
dealer and flips over the next. Cat flips over ‘EL’
and passes. Kes is forced to pass - with an A on
the left, cards can only be placed on the right. The
only letters Kes can now take are X, Y or Z.
As everyone passed, Cat is still the dealer and
flips another card. Cat will probably win. Kes realises
that they made big mistakes but is just learning and feels OK.
Several turns later, 4 cards have been discarded
and the round ends. Cat has 11 cards so scores 11
points. Kes only has 5 cards for 5 points.
[AP][OH][SG][EW][IY]
[SB][SD][NF][NH][IL][AJ][AM][NZ][IQ][SC][TL]
Now, all the cards are shuffled back into the deck
to begin a new round.
CREDITS/THANKS/HISTORY
Invented by Andrew Dennison at UKGE 2015
after they first saw the Wibbell++ deck.
Originally a realtime game, the judgement call of
how many letters to skip had to be made quickly
and the first person to shout would get the card.
Mistakes were possible (costing you negative
points) and knowing the alphabet was a vital skill.
Many folk at Playtest UK helped me develop the
game. It seemed only the target line length and
negative value of mistakes needed modification.
However, it was radically changed after Rules of
Play’s Tabletop Day event in April 2016. Drunken
convention goers played in an unusual way and
the game broke down. Everyone shouted to take a
card before even seeing what it was! Only after-
wards did I realise that everyone was actually play-
ing optimally and ‘locked’ in a Nash equilibrium.
The ‘turn based’ method was first discussed and
then tried with Marta Borowiecka and Konrad
Borowiecki the following day. Immediately, it
was clear that this allowed everyone to ponder the
deeper ramifications of their choices. Do you need
to take a card to block the person to your left?
Alternatively, if no-one else wants a card, you can
pass on an ‘OK’ card, hoping for a ‘great’ card.
So much potential depth had simply not been
accesssed with the realtime version.
Thanks to everyone who playtested - at conven-
tions, PlaytestUK meetups, or in the pub.
In the 1st edition rules, the target score was 26 - a
reference to the number of letters in the alphabet.
This was confusing for most people, though, so
was changed to 25 for this edition.
The previous edition also suggested playing until
someone got to 11 cards in their line. The new
trigger for the end of a round was proposed by
Mick Wood. At first, I was sceptical but playing
it at a Friday daytime playtest revealed that it in-
creased interaction and was preferred by everyone.
At first I included it as a variant, but having
observed it several more times last weekend (at
UKGE 2018), I have now decided that this ‘vari-
ant’ is almost certainly a better game.
These rules proofread by R. Mortimer, C. Zlinski,
A. Lowther, M. Wood, M. Belsole and J. Brieger.