How to Play Upwords: Upwords Rules
Upwords is a word-building board game that is similar to Scrabble. It basically involves spelling words with stackable letter tiles on a special game board to score points. The following are the important rules of the Upwords game that you should know about:
Setup: Set the plastic game board, four plastic tile racks, four rubber feet, a score sheet, and 100 plastic letter tiles.
Create a draw pile. Turn all the letter tiles face down and give them a good mix.
Give each player one plastic tile rack. Two to four players can play the game.
Have a notepad and a pen ready to keep score.
A dictionary will also come in handy to verify that the words used by the players are real words.
Upwords rules vary from one version of the game to another, but the basic rules of the game are as follows:
Upwords Game Play: Each player should draw seven letter tiles from the draw pile, and then they should draw a letter each to determine who will play first. The privilege to go first is given to the player who draws the letter earliest in the alphabet. The first player starts with attempting to form a word with at least two letters and must place them on one of the special game squares in the center of the plastic game board. After a successful attempt by the first player, the other players take their turns, stacking letters onto the game board.
Stacking Letters: The next player(s) should place at least one letter tile on the game board to form a new word. There are two ways of forming new words. The first way is to add a letter tile that connects to a word that is already formed. For instance, if there is the word “mood” on the game board, a player can stack the letter “y” or “s” at the end of that word to create another word, i.e., “moody” or “moods.” The other option is to stack a letter on top of one of the letters on the board to change a word into an entirely different one. For instance, a player can stack the letter “g” on top of the letter “m” in the word “mood” to change the word into “good.”
Scoring Points: A player earns one score per letter tile for any word in which one or more letter tiles are stacked on top of each other. A player earns two scores for each letter tile that forms a word whose letters are only one tile high. A player earns two bonus scores if he/she uses the “Qu” tile in a word that contains letters that are all only one tile high. A player gets to earn an additional 20 points if he/she uses all of his/her seven letter tiles in a single turn. A player can also score all words that he/she forms during each of his/her turns. If a player uses a stack of letters more than once, he/she gets to earn a score for each word he/she forms. Note that a player cannot earn a score by merely adding an “s” to a word on the game board to make it plural.
Ending the Game: The game ends when there the players have no more letters and the letter draw bag is empty, or when there are no more words that can be formed from the tile racks and the letter draw bag. The players can also include a predetermined time in their Upwords Rules to stipulate the time at which the game will end.
Winning Upwords: After the game has ended, a tally of all the scores should be done. Each tile left on a player’s rack subtracts five points from the player’s total score. The player with the highest score becomes the winner.
