My love of UpWords began with Boggle, another great word game. Seeking a change from years of obsessively playing Boggle with family and friends, I went exploring for a new game that involved words. Before Boggle, I played Scrabble. In my hunt for a new way to compete, I stumbled on the board game, UpWords, which is a product of the Hasbro Toy Company (also the makers of Scrabble). Much like Scrabble and Boggle, UpWords follows a similar pattern of building words from a hand of seven tiles per player. The challenge in this game, however, relies much more on strategy and tile placement, where words are built on top of others. It’s a really fun and exciting game. In fact, it’s a game of presidents. Yes, UpWords was one of the diversions that President Bill Clinton and family used when he was recovering from heart surgery. However, you don’t need a presidential endorsement to see how good this product is, you just need to play it once, and I guarantee, you’ll be hooked.
The board game UpWords features a plastic board with plastic tile pieces. Much like Scrabble, you place the tiles upside down and choose 7 per player to start the game. Unlike Scrabble’s complicated scoring system, however, UpWords focuses on building words on each other. For example, I put down the word “chose.” You replace it with “class,” still using my “c” and “s” tiles by placing your “l” atop my “h,” your “a” atop my “o” and your “s” over my “e.” I get points for 5 letters, but you get to score not only on the letters you added, but mine as well. Thus, “close” gets 5 points, but “class” gets 8. Tiles can be piled up until there are no more than five tiles in any one area. The real strategy comes from making longer and more complicated words atop already existing words. Unlike Scrabble, there are no extra points, with the exception of 20 bonus points for using all 7 tiles in one word.
UpWords markets itself as “the 3-dimensional word game that’s stacks of fun,” and I couldn’t agree more. There’s an element of risk in that you never know what letters you will pull from the general draw pile. There’s intellectual challenge from creating words; the better your vocabulary, of course, the more words you have to choose from. There’s strategy because the placement of tiles and building multidimensional words is everything, particularly as the game ensues. I’ve played many a game that was lost or won based on the placement of one fantastic word that no one can build on further.
Much like Scrabble, words cannot be proper names, hyphenated, must be in English, must be found in whatever dictionary you use to play the game. No prefixes or suffixes, no foreign words, no abbreviations…standard stuff. As for slang, you can decide ahead of time what you will consider acceptable. You can go strictly by the dictionary or make your own adjustments. With my friends and family, we include slang, giving props to clever word usage.
There are other rules, but in many ways, UpWords is a more simple game than Scrabble. Yet when it comes to strategy and ingenuity, it requires a more sophisticated game to succeed. The best word does not always equal the most points. Throughout the course of playing UpWords, I’ve also found that the games become more complicated as the players become more proficient, so it continues to be exciting, long after other games have fallen by the wayside. In short, UpWords grows more interesting as you learn to play better. That’s a great game attribute. Finally, UpWords has the beneficial side effect of improving your language skills. Of course, that’s not a reason to play this fun game; the strategy, intelligence, and word savvy to be a success at UpWords are reason enough.
