Quiddler

My wife and I just got back from a vacation, a vacation which entailed a ferry ride through the San Juan Islands on the coast of Washington state. I was absolutely amazed by the number of people playing card games-- people young and old, big groups and small.

A middle-aged couple sitting next to us were playing a card game called Quiddler, which they highly recommended. They seemed very quiet and engrossed, which is probably a good state of mind to be in on a long ferry ride. As the game sells for under $15 dollars in most places, we decided to pick up a copy.

Now, the packaging itself is lovely, as are the 118 cards that comprise the gameplay pieces. They are printed with large type that is easy to read, along with an "illuminated" (think Book of Kells) letter in very large print in the center, in color. They are very well made from a useability and durability standpoint. My only gripe is that the box sets the buyer up to believe that they are buying an "exciting" and "fun" game.

After being delighted with the cards, both my wife and I were absolutely flummoxed by the rules. Now, clearly, it is a game about spelling words from the letter cards in your hands. Each turn, the player has the option of turning their entire hand into one or more words, finishing the hand, or swapping one of their cards for one on either the discard are draw piles.

Sadly, there was some very odd language in the rules about how to a player finishes a hand. I will spare people the grief and just state that to close out a hand, a player must use all of his or her cards, creating one word or more. After closing out, the remaining players have one last turn to close out as well.

Letters that cannot be formed into words penalize the remaining players. Scoring is done by adding up the numbers printed on each of the cards-- and then subtracting the remaining unused cards in one's hand. As the game progresses, the players get more and more cards to work with. Ultimately, the game ends after an eight-card round.

Review

The Mechanics

My wife and I both found the game mechanics to be very straightforward once we got past our initial confusion and false starts-- it is amazing how a single, poorly-worded sentence can screw up an entire game. That being said, we really didn't detect any emergent properties as we continued to play. It seemed that, once we had grasped the written rules, there didn't seem to be any meta-rules or strategies that arose from that understanding. This game is solely about making words from an essentially random set of letters, quickly, before your opponent can get their act together. Yes, one can gamble with which letters to keep and discard, but the result is still based on pure chance.

The Play 

Frankly, this game feels a lot more like homework or paperwork than it feels like play. Moreover, this game doesn't transcend disparate vocabulary levels one bit; the packaging says "Ages 8+," but an reasonably intelligent adult would leave an eight year-old in tears. However, anyone wanting to "match wits" with their opponents could really enjoy this game, just as they might a game of Scrabble.

Final Words

I'm not entirely sure my wife and I will play this again anytime soon, but we might break it out with friends. Being a card game, it travels very well on trips, sets up quickly, and scales from a solitaire version all the way up to eight players. It certainly seems to play better than the card game version of Scrabble, which I'll give my thoughts on in another post.

Remember, Quiddler is neither fun nor exciting-- it is intellectually challenging and somewhat stressful.