We’d like to thank our sponsor for today, Typecrush, a puzzling game of words. This is a word nerd’s game, to a “t.” Or a “u.”
Indeed, wordplay is at the heart of Typecrush. The playing pieces are very simple: colored round cardboard disks (made from recycled materials!) with a letter printed on one side. The whole alphabet is represented, but there are specific quantities of each letter (a little like Scrabble, that way). The color of the disk represents how frequently the letter printed on it comes up in words in English. So, for example, the blue disks have the most common letters (A, E, O, N, and T), where the gray disks have the least common (J, K, Q, V, X, Z). Players are meant to puzzle out words from a series of face-down disks based on their knowledge of the letter frequency represented by the colors of the disks, as well as other clues.
What’s really interesting about Typecrush are the rules: there really aren’t any! The “How to Play” card that comes with Typecrush has these instructions:
- Spell a Word, Make Sure No One Sees!
- Flip the Circles to Hide Your Word
- Use the Letter Frequency Chart and Solve
But that’s it. How many disks to you draw? How do you score? Well, this is what the creators say about that:
There’s only one rule in Typecrush—whoever solves the word first gets to choose the next word. That’s it. If you’d like more rules—you’re free to make up your own. Typecrush is about communication and connection more than keeping score, so feel free to give a hint or turn over a letter if a player asks. We recommend playing themes like US states, types of animals, celebrity names and more. The options are endless.
It’s a bold choice, and refreshing. Of course, if you have younger kids who need a bit more structure to their games, you can always provide your own. For example
- On their turn, the player chooses one disk of each color from a scrambled pile of face-down disks.
- The player spells a secret word using as many of the tiles as they like.
- Each other player may ask a yes/no question about the word, continuing around the group as many times as needed.
- The first player to guess the word wins as many points as the letters of the word. The player who spelled the word gets as many points as the number of questions that had to be asked to guess the word.
That’s just one idea we made up, and it worked great. But, again, you can create your own game out of Typecrush, so the possibilities are huge!
As part of their sponsorship today, the folks at Typecrush have graciously given us a special offer code as well. If you use the code “geekdad15” you’ll save 15% off the normal price ($25) of Typecrush. We hope you’ll help support GeekDad by supporting our sponsors, and give Typecrush a try!
Typecrush is available from their website.
You can also follow them on Twitter, and let them know you heard about them on GeekDad.
