ALPHABETICKELL

Overview
Take cards to place in an alphabetical order in your own personal line. You can skip letters, but can never use any letter you skipped. Think about the letter distribution, others’ lines and the discarded cards. When 4 cards are discarded, the round ends and everyone scores! Play to 25+pts.

Setup - choose your starting cards
Choose a dealer. For the first round, the player whose name is earliest in the alphabet. Deal each player 3 cards. Starting from the dealer and going clockwise, choose 1 to keep face up in front of you, starting a personal line of cards. Shuffle the others back into the deck. I suggest keeping a card with letters in the middle of the alphabet. Anything before I or after S might be a bad choice.

Play a round - assembling lines
Begin the game by flipping a card face up. In turn order, clockwise starting from the dealer, each player either passes or takes that card to add to either end of their line. When the game begins, your ‘line’ is just one card. When taking your 2nd card, you must immediately choose which letters on those 2 cards you are using. To make it obvious, perhaps raise/lower your cards. The line of cards must be in alphabetical order based on 1 letter from each card. Letters can be skipped. I.e. Letters do not need to be consecutive. No letter may be repeated. Cards must be added only to the left and right. Never in the middle. So, once you skip a letter, you cannot ever take it.

[[NH][AP][SC]

EXAMPLE: Marti has the sequence ‘NPS’. Marti cannot

Flip another card
If a card is taken by someone, the player to their left becomes the next dealer. I.e. The player to the left of whoever took a card has the first ‘right of refusal’ on the new card. If everyone passes on a card, it is discarded and the same dealer flips over a new card. Ending the round & scoring When 4 cards have been discarded, the round ends. Everyone then scores. In the unlikely situation that the deck runs out, you also end the round and score. Each card is worth 1 point.

EXAMPLES:
[eK][iL][Nu][Oc][aP][iQ] Maria has 6 points. Maria waited too long for the ‘K’. [AL][IB][EW][TH][IU][EL][EM][NB][OD][SC][OU] Ed gets 11 points. Ed carefully considered letter distribution. [AW][TC][SD][NF][SG][RH][TM][RW][TD] Bez has 9 points. They sometimes skipped too many letters. Play multiple rounds - reach 25+pts Stop if anyone has 25 points or more. Whoever has the most points is the winner! Congratulations! Otherwise, start a whole new round. Whoever has the lowest score is the starting dealer. If there is a tie for lowest score, choose the tied player with the name earliest in the alphabet. For your reference: the alphabet, and letter frequency, is:

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z 6 4 4 5 6 2 3 5 6 1 1 5 4 6 6 2 1 6 6 6 3 1 3 1 2 1

EXAMPLE TURNS
Kes and Cat are playing. Kes chose ‘SG’ and Cat chose ‘AJ’ to start their personal lines. [sg] [aj] Kes is the first dealer and flips ‘EW’. Kes takes it, placing it to the right to form ‘S’, ‘W’. [Sg][eW] As Kes took a card, Cat is the next dealer. Cat flips ‘AM’, taking it to form ‘J’, ‘M’. [aJ][aM] Kes is the new dealer. They flip ‘OH’, taking it to form ‘O’, ‘S’, ‘W’. This is almost certainly a bad move, as they are skipping 9 cards fairly early on! [Oh][Sg][sW] Cat flips ‘AP’ and passes. Kes takes it, placing it to the left of their line. This is a big mistake.

Since Kes took the last card, Cat becomes the dealer and flips over the next. Cat flips over ‘EL’ and passes. Kes is forced to pass - with an A on the left, cards can only be placed on the right. The only letters Kes can now take are X, Y or Z. As everyone passed, Cat is still the dealer and flips another card. Cat will probably win. Kes realises that they made big mistakes but is just learning and feels OK. Several turns later, 4 cards have been discarded and the round ends. Cat has 11 cards so scores 11 points. Kes only has 5 cards for 5 points.

[AP][OH][SG][EW][IY] [SB][SD][NF][NH][IL][AJ][AM][NZ][IQ][SC][TL]

Now, all the cards are shuffled back into the deck to begin a new round.

CREDITS/THANKS/HISTORY
Invented by Andrew Dennison at UKGE 2015 after they first saw the Wibbell++ deck. Originally a realtime game, the judgement call of how many letters to skip had to be made quickly and the first person to shout would get the card. Mistakes were possible (costing you negative points) and knowing the alphabet was a vital skill. Many folk at Playtest UK helped me develop the game. It seemed only the target line length and negative value of mistakes needed modification. However, it was radically changed after Rules of Play’s Tabletop Day event in April 2016. Drunken convention goers played in an unusual way and the game broke down. Everyone shouted to take a

card before even seeing what it was! Only after- wards did I realise that everyone was actually play- ing optimally and ‘locked’ in a Nash equilibrium.

The ‘turn based’ method was first discussed and then tried with Marta Borowiecka and Konrad Borowiecki the following day. Immediately, it was clear that this allowed everyone to ponder the deeper ramifications of their choices. Do you need to take a card to block the person to your left? Alternatively, if no-one else wants a card, you can pass on an ‘OK’ card, hoping for a ‘great’ card. So much potential depth had simply not been accesssed with the realtime version.

Thanks to everyone who playtested - at conven- tions, PlaytestUK meetups, or in the pub.

In the 1st edition rules, the target score was 26 - a reference to the number of letters in the alphabet. This was confusing for most people, though, so was changed to 25 for this edition. The previous edition also suggested playing until someone got to 11 cards in their line. The new trigger for the end of a round was proposed by Mick Wood. At first, I was sceptical but playing

it at a Friday daytime playtest revealed that it in- creased interaction and was preferred by everyone.

At first I included it as a variant, but having observed it several more times last weekend (at

UKGE 2018), I have now decided that this ‘vari- ant’ is almost certainly a better game.

These rules proofread by R. Mortimer, C. Zlinski, A. Lowther, M. Wood, M. Belsole and J. Brieger.