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|
 TheUpwords board and tiles | |
| Other names | Crucimaster Topword Scrabble Upwords |
|---|---|
| Designers | Elliot Rudell |
| Publishers | Milton Bradley Spin Master |
| Publication | 1982; 43 years ago (1982) |
| Years active | 1982–? |
| Genres | board game |
| Languages | English |
| Players | 2 to 4 |
| Setup time | < 2 min |
| Playing time | 45 to 90 minutes |
| Chance | Medium |
| Age range | 10+ |
| Skills | Mathematics,strategy,vocabulary |
| Related games | |
| Scrabble | |
Upwords is aboard game. It was originally manufactured and marketed by theMilton Bradley Company, then a division ofHasbro. It has been marketed under its own name and also asScrabble Upwords in the United States and Canada, andTopwords,Crucimaster,Betutorony,Palabras Arriba andStapelwoord in other countries. It is currently available as a board game and a digital gaming app.
Upwords is a letter tile word game similar toScrabble, with players building words using letter tiles on a gridded game board. UnlikeScrabble, inUpwords letters can be stacked on top of existing words to create new words. Scoring is determined by the number of letter tiles, including tiles in a stack, in a new word.
Upwords was originally played on an 8×8 square board, with 64 letter tiles. Hasbro Europe later expanded the gameboard to a 10×10 matrix and 100 tiles, to accommodate the longer words frequently used in other languages such asGerman andDutch. The 10×10 matrix is currently employed in worldwide versions of the game, with the "classic" 8×8 version also available.
To determine play sequence, each player draws a tile; the player with the letter nearest to A will be the first to play. The tiles are returned to the draw pile.
Each player draws seven tiles to start the game. The first player forms a word with one or more of their tiles, and must place it so that the tiles cover one or more of the four central squares. The player then draws more tiles to replace those played. Play continues clockwise.
Subsequent players may put tiles on the board adjacent to and/or on top of the tiles already played, as long as all words formed are found in the dictionary being used and the rules below are followed. All words must read horizontally from left to right, or vertically from top to bottom.
All tiles played on a turn must form part of one continuous straight line of tiles across or down.
For example, if the word CATER is on the board, a player could put a B and E in front of CATER and then put an L on top of the C and a D on top of the R to build BELATED.
Restrictions on words are as follows:
Restrictions on stacking tiles are as follows:
A player may choose to pass at any time, or discard one tile and draw a replacement instead of playing. Once the draw pile is exhausted, the game ends when any player runs out of tiles, or every player passes in a single round. In some versions of the game it doesn't end when a player runs out of tiles, only when all pass or all the tiles are played.
Any word with no stacked letters scores two points per tile, while a word containing stacked letters scores one point for every tile it contains. In the CATER/BELATED example above, CATER would score 10 points, while BELATED would score nine. Two bonus points are awarded for using the "Qu" tile in a one-level word, and 20 for using all seven tiles in one turn. If changing two words at once, both words must be legal.
Players lose five points for every unused tile they hold at the end of the game.
The letter distribution of the 8×8 version of Upwords is as follows:[1]
64 tiles:
1 of each: F, J, K, Qu, V, W, X, Z
2 of each: B, C, G, H, R, Y
3 of each: D, L, M, N, P, S, U
4 of each: I, O, T
5 of each: A
6 of each: E
The letter distribution of the 10×10 version is as follows:[1]
100 tiles:
1 of each: J, Qu, V, X, Z
2 of each: K, W, Y
3 of each: B, F, G, H, P
4 of each: C
5 of each: D, L, M, N, R, T, U
6 of each: S
7 of each: A, I, O
8 of each: E
In the early 1990s, Hasbro licensed electronic marketing rights toMicrosoft, briefly making the game available electronically. Microsoft no longer has rights toUpwords.
An app was released under license foriOS devices in 2013, with anAndroid version following in 2014.
| Intellectual properties currently managed by Hasbro |
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