GWG Rule Change Proposal 3 - New game

No multiplyer tiles at all. The board will be folded both ways so that tiles at the left are connected to tiles at the right and tiles at the bottom connected to tiles at the top. All tiles will have 8 connectors to other tiles. No bonus for long words.

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Idea: All tiles will have equal significance and finding high scoring words will be much harder. I think this culd be interesting to try.

Tore, Great idea. IMHO This type of game should be implimented as an alternative to the existing one.

Yes, if this is implemented I agree it should be as an alternative to the current game.

Just to make it clear: Corner tiles are also connected diagonally so that upper left is connected to lower right. This way the board will behave as if it was drawn on a toroid (or doughnut).

I will create some variants of game for waiting room.

Great!!

Still waiting, patiently, for the variants. :)

I think the biggest problem is graphical interface for the table and the moves :)

graphical interface? this is not a problem at all! I doesn't have to be actually connected. Just some kind of dotted line in the borders of the board meaning it connects along the board.

Another idea for a variant - a new letter tile could be introduced called a "blank tile." It's not a letter at all. It's just an empty space - the equivalent of what we see at the end of the game, when letter tiles are replaced with nothing. There could be.. a total of about four of these new tiles, and like the other tiles, would appear randomly in the bag. Now, during the early and middle stages of the game, at times, the board would be partially "empty."

A portion of the bag might look like this:

Bag: T1 M2 O1 Qu5 E1 U1 G2 O1 I1 G2 A1 N1 O1 J4 I1 E1 A1 R1 N1 Y3 P2... etc.

Hey! That's interesting! My tile bag in my post above had two "blanks" in them. I indicated the blanks with the word "blank" with a "<" to the left of the word blank and a ">" to the right of the word. Upon posting the message, that entire representation disappeared completely.

Let's try this:

Bag: T1 M2 O1 Qu5 E1 "blank" U1 G2 O1 I1 G2 A1 N1 O1 "blank" J4 I1 E1 A1 R1 N1 Y3 P2... etc.

Four blank tiles sounds too much. After a blank tile is put into the game, the place will stay blank until the end of the game, won't it?

ypercube, a solution might be (mayb Ed's idea...) to "pick and use" blank tile to "jump" across it to use the next letter (like when it is actually empty).

Scratch my idea. I don't think I thought it through properly.

No, my intent was the that space/area would not stay blank the entire game. The first time someone "passed over it" it would then be replaced by then next tile in the bag, just like in the game now. (And if that's the case then no, I don't think four blanks would be too much.) But the whole concept/idea becomes somewhat unclear if you pass over that blank tile, select a letter, and then backtrack and pass over it AGAIN. I've decided I don't like it.

Gregorio's comment (pick and use) brings up ideas for variants where both players have a tile or two all their own, in their hand, that they can use at any time. (Similar to Scrabble, where each player has their own rack of tiles.) This might then bring up additional strategy points that don't exist in the game now at all. (What tiles to keep in your hand (Es? Ss?) when to use them... etc.

Your idea (with four tiles) might work if we allow only one pass through the "blank", or we better name it "grey" tile. The name "blank" made me think that it was the same as the blank spaces that appear at the end of the game.

So, you could play the "grey" tile just like the *. The only difference would be that * means 1 or more letters and the "grey" means 0 letter.

yes, ypercube's last post rephrases my idea perfectly :)

bump