Funspell

Dossier

Funspell has a 10x10 grid board and 100 tiles, including 97 letters with their values, 2 blanks, 1 star tile. To start, the tiles are placed face up randomly into the spaces of the grid. The game has two phases: drafting (though the term didn't exist then) and scoring. During the drafting phase, a player in their turn moves the star tile into an occupied space that is adjacent orthogonally or diagonally -- a chess king's move away -- and takes the tile moved onto. This is continued until either all the non-star tiles are claimed, or the star tile is isolated, not adjacent to any occupied space. Then all the players arrange their captured letters into words of 4+ letters. Each word's starting value is the sum of the values of its letters, which range from 1 for common letters, 2-5 for most of the others, and 7-10 for the rare letters; the blank tiles may count as any letter, but have a value of 0. If a word has 6-7 letters, its value is doubled; if 8+ letters, it is tripled. The value of unused letters is subtracted from the total. The player with the highest total score wins.