Dice Words

The game Dicewords feels like Scrabble and Yahtzee had a baby, and the offspring is delightfully challenging. With the combined pressure of using one or more of the four target letters to multiply your score and the deadline of a timer, it seems to even the playing field between those who gravitate toward word games and those who are better under pressure. I’m a word nerd, but I don’t think well under pressure. Needless to say, I’ve never won a match but I’ve enjoyed every play of this game. Scoring can be a bit confusing the first round, so I found it helpful to do a practice round for players to get a handle on multiplying their Scrabble-like score by the number of target letters included in the word. Most balked at the idea of getting zero points for using zero target letters, but the bonus points for word length made up for that disadvantage (we’ve only used the easy side of the scoreboards, which begins bonuses at 4-letter words). For those who dislike the math in games, it’s relatively painless: just basic multiplication and addition. Both of my children (13 and 10) enjoyed Dicewords and requested it twice. There are variations to help younger players but we played the normal game and it worked well. Dicewords is delightfully produced. Everything sticks with the drink theme, from the plastic dice cups, the colored dice representing four different cold beverages, bendy straw scoreboards, and an ice tray for the target letter ice cubes. While Dicewords comes packaged for up to four players, my game group played with three sets to allow for nine players. The top two winners went home with their own set.