Line Word

Author's product rating:   

Advantages:	Good for wordsmiths
Disadvantages:	Rather hazy rules  -  complicated to score

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

When it comes to Christmas presents you are never quite sure what you are going to get from my younger son. Is it going to be something wonderful or something that leaves me scratching my head and wondering where he got the idea that I would like the strange gift he has chosen.
I have yet to make up my mind which catagory Line Word falls into, suffice to say that anyone that I have enticed to play it with me has not asked to play it again.

The game is for 2 players aged 5years+ (my lovely son got a white pen to change this to 50+)
***** What you get *****

The pack contains:
36 plastic letter tiles in red and 36 plastic letter tiles in black
A plastic playing board with a lift up frame and two storage compartments.
There are no score cards provided you are advised that it would be useful for each player to have a pencil and paper before you start to play - I would think this was essential if you are adding up scores after each turn.

The letter tiles
Thes are shaped like patch pockets and are designed to fit into the storage compartments at each side of the plastic board.
For each colour there are
2 A's,
3 E's
2I's,
2L's
2N's
2O's
2R's
2S's
2T's
and one tile for each other letter of the alphabet.

The game board

This is made from bright orange transparent and navy blue plastic and resembles the board that you use for Connect 4.
It is a trifle stiff to open.
The tiles fit neatly into the side compartments but when it is full they are difficult to get out again.
For storage the tiles have to be put in with the curved side upwards otherwise the covers do not shut.
Also when playing the game if a tile needs to be removed it is very difficult to get individual tiles out.
The actual game board is 7 slots wide and 6 slots high.

Playing the game.
The object of the game is to drop letters into the board and to make words. Scoring is on the face of it straightforward as you score one point for each letter of each word you make. This isn't as easy as it seems as a simple word like crown is not scored as 5 points but as follows:
CROWN 5points
CROW 4 POINTS
rOW 3 POINTS
OWN 3 POINTS
OR 2 POINTS
So in fact it actually scores 17 points.
But if the colour of the first letter is the same as the last letter you double the score.
I can't imagine an average 5 year old coping with this. UH what is 17 x 2?
There is a further complication as words can be scored either vertically or horizontally so you could be going through this process for words formed in more than one line or column.

To start the game one decides who goes first by flipping a coin (they don't provide this either.)
Each player takes turns to drop one of their letters into the game frame. The first player drops a letter anywhere in the frame, The second player can drop their letter anywhere in the frame or next to the first players letter.
What isn't made clear in the rules is how the letter is selected Is it at random unseen or by selection of the letter tile of choice?
Each player should try to make a new word or make an existing word longer ROW + C = CROW
Scores are marked down after each players turn.
The game finishes when the board is full or both players agree that no more words can be made.
At this point the scores are added up and the winner is the person with the highest score.

Words have to be found in the English dictionary and no abbreviations or hyphenated words are allowed.

MY OPINION

This game seems to be an excellent idea in principle, quicker to play than Scrabble, fewer things to think about such as double words or triple letter scores or different scores for each letter as each letter is worth one point.
In practice it is quite complicated, firstly because of the complication of scoring words within words in two directions, adding one letter to make several more words within words requires great powers of observation to accurately calculate your score at the end of each turn.
The letters if chosen at random often do not make words and this can become quite frustrating. If one chooses individual letters then it becomes easier to make words but what do you do with the QZXK you have left? Although with 42 spaces and 72 letters even if the board is full each player should be left with 15 letters at the end of the game.

At the end of the game the tiles are dropped out by lifting and pivoting the gameboard just as with Connect 4. They drop into the tray underneath the gameboard. In practice they tend to fly everywhere and result in scrambling around on the floor trying to find them all.
Putting the tiles away in the storage compartments is a very fiddly process and I have given up bothering to even try.

I have tried to play this game with my partner and we both became quite frustrated during the game as it was often impossible to make new words or even add letters to existing words so we have returned to playing Scrabble.

I introduced it at my regular monthly Mensa games night and I am afraid that it recieved a very emphatic thumbs down. There was much critisism of the very hazy rules. The more pedantic players were most confused by the lack of instructions on how to select tiles - Most of the time spent agreeing rules before we started!

I have yet to try this out with children of any age although I intend to take it to work to try out with my little cherubs. I hope that they don't find it as frustrating as I did as their anger management still needs a lot of work (That is why they are with me)

As the children at work are all over 3 years old I suppose I do not need to heed the warning that it is not suitable for children under 36 months old due to small parts (on the children or the game?)

Overall it is easy to set up and frustrating to play and almost impossible to score. A good idea but in practice we didn't find it much fun to play

I am sorry that I can't provide details of price. I believe my son bought it from Argos but I am not certain.
These details can probably be obtained from;
ARG, Avebury, 489-499 Avebury Boulevard, Milton Keynes, MK9 2NW