A rummy-like word card game that was approved by the California Dept. of Education.

The deck has 72 cards 68 cards with a letter and a value (2-9), and 4 jokers which act like wild cards.

The basic game is Dealer's Choice: the dealer chooses how many to deal per player, and announces the winning condition, e.g. "Make one word using all 5 cards", "Make two words using all 7 cards", "Make the name of a state", etc. In a turn a player draws 1 from the draw or discard pile, and either goes out by revealing their hand with the winning condition, or discards 1 card.

Usually each hand is a separate game, but one proposed scoring method is to concatenate the values of the first two cards, e.g. the letters D,O,R,S,W are worth 5, 7, 5, 2 & 6, so "SWORD" scores 26, but "WORDS" scores 67. (Jokers are treated like a 0.)

Other games described include:

Lions & Tigers: Leave out Jokers, and deal 8-12 per player. Players meld words during their turn, and may add letters to words on the table, rearranging them to make new words, and adding them to their own possessions. Players may draw the top 3 of the discard pile. A hand ends when a player empties their hand. Players score for the length of their words on the table (5 letter word => 20 points, plus 20 more for letter over 5), and subtract 10 for each letter in hand.

Solitaire: Lay 7 cards face up, make any words you can, replacing the vacated spaces. Then deal cards in groups of 3, and use the top card to make words with the others and/or fill empty spaces. Previous words can be expanded and/or combined together.

Group Word-Formation: (suggested for ESL students) Spread the cards face-up on a table, and ask the students to find letters for words in a particular subject, e.g. body parts, food, etc.

Letter Recognition: (suggested for pre-schoolers) Spread the cards on a table and have the child pick 3 letters and see if they make a word. The parent can suggest letters to get, and can show what the word stands for when a word is spelled right.

Games