We were reintroduced to this game on New Year's Eve. I say reintroduced because we used to own a set but we couldn't figure out how to play it! We tried following the directions a couple of times and whatever we were not doing right made the game incredibly boring, so there it sat on the shelf until I finally gave it away.
Well, once we learned how to play it the right way we just had to go out and purchase it again! This time, however, we got the double set with 288 tiles so that we can all play.
Depending on how many are playing, each player picks a certain number of tiles and then you all set about building your own crossword puzzle.
You can move things around whenever you like; you can even destroy your puzzle and start over again! When you run out of your tiles, you yell "peel" and everyone has to pick one more tile. This continues until all of the tiles are gone. The first one to use all of their tiles (and not misspell anything) wins.
It may not sound like much fun but once you begin playing you won't want to stop! Even the kids who weren't good spellers and didn't like it at first have come around and are enjoying it as much as the rest of us. We make sure we have a dictionary handy, too. It helps if you need to find word ideas or to check the spelling of your opponents words!
If you're looking for an educational, fiercely competitive game, I highly recommend Bananagrams!
