Upwords

UpWords

A finished Upwords game
Designers	Elliot Rudell
Publishers	Hasbro Games
Players	2 to 4
Setup time	< 2 min
Playing time	45 to 90 minutes
Chance	Medium
Age range	10 years and up
Skills	Counting, Strategy, Vocabulary

Upwords (also known as Scrabble Upwords in the United States and Canada) is a board game invented by Elliot Rudell and originally published by the Milton Bradley Company, now a division of Hasbro. The game remains under license to Hasbro by Rudell Design, LLC. Upwords is similar to Scrabble, or Words With Friends in that players build words using letter tiles on a gridded gameboard. The notable point of difference is that in Upwords letters can be stacked on top of other letters already on the gameboard to create new words. The higher the stack of letters, the more points are scored. This typically makes words built in later turns of the game more valuable than earlier words, increasing play intensity and adding a level of strategy unique to Upwords.

In January 2013 Upwords was released as app for iOS devices, being cited as a top-download its first week of introduction. An online dictionary keeps players honest and up to date on correct words and their spelling. The app is an accurate translation of the classic board game.

Unlike Scrabble, which is manufactured in the U.S. and Canada by Hasbro, and elsewhere in the world by Mattel, Upwords is solely controlled by Hasbro worldwide. The game is available in about twenty languages, and there have been national tournaments played in Hungary and Turkey.

Gameplay

Players draw letter tiles until they have seven tiles on their racks. The first player forms a word that covers one or more of the central squares. After forming a word, the player draws more tiles to replenish their rack. Play continues to the left.

Subsequent plays may put tiles on the board and on top of tiles already played, as long as all words formed are found in the dictionary being used. For example, if a word on the board is CATER, a player on a subsequent turn could put a B and E in front of CATER and then put an L on top of the C and a D on top of the R to build BELATED.

Each player has seven letters and tries to place some or all of their tiles on the board to make words that link up with another word or words on the grid, like a crossword puzzle, to score as many points as possible. The board is purposely smaller (has less tile positions) than Scrabble to encourage and even force the stacking up of letters upon letters. The game is therefore a little quicker and more intense. It does not have special squares such as "triple word scores" and "double letter scores" that require additional scoring calculations.

Unlike Scrabble or Words With Friends, where tiles (once played) remain unchangeable and therefore stagnant on the gameboard, in Upwords a word that has been placed on the board can later be modified to another word by placing tiles over some of the letters, stacking tiles up to a maximum of five high. For example, the word CAT could have an H placed over it to make HAT, or an H over the C and an E on the end to make HATE. If a player can alter two words at once, he scores both, so if the word CAT were already played, then an H could be placed over the C, and then A, R, and P added to make both HAT and HARP. The potential for clever play is quite great and most games include in them some turn in which a player makes three interesting words all at once to score a lot of points. The stacking-to-change is simple and intuitive.

Players score one point for every tile in their word, and for each tile under their word. If the word is entirely on the first board layer, they instead score two points per letter. When a word is constructed that contains stacked tiles (up to a total of 5 high), point values will increase. This therefore results in increased scoring towards the end of the game.

Since Upwords purposely omits bonus squares found in Scrabble, players are not allowed to pluralize existing words by simply adding an "s" on the end of a word and ending their turn. If a word is pluralized by the addition of an "s", the "s" must also be part of another complete word that was placed on the board. This rule prevents players from capitalizing too much on other players' words, and not changing that prior word.

Originally, Upwords was played on an 8 by 8 square board, with 64 letter tiles. Hasbro Europe later expanded the gameboard to a 10 by 10 matrix and 100 tiles, to accommodate the longer words often frequently utilized in foreign languages such as German and Dutch. The 10 by 10 matrix is currently employed in worldwide offerings of the game.

Other versions

Years ago Hasbro licensed electronic marketing rights to Microsoft, making it available electronically for the first time since AOL bought Games.com and withdrew the game. Microsoft no longer has rights to Upwords.

In 2013, Upwords was released as a licensed app for smartphones and tablets.

External links

• Upwords at BoardGameGeek