Word Thief
- Selwyn Ward
- 9 hours ago
- 4 min read
There have been many travel versions of the classic word game Scrabble (Hasbro). These have varying degrees of success in terms of portability, usually involving shrunk-down tiles and a magnetic or peg board. But the fact that you still have a board, a bag of tiles and tile racks remains an encumbrance. Word Thief, from Outset Media and Cheatwell Games is essentially a Scrabble variant that is played using letter cards and which dispenses altogether with a board, so it could be an ideal travel companion for word game enthusiasts.
The game comprises a deck of four wild cards (the equivalent of a blank in Scrabble) and 104 letter cards with a distribution that is broadly similar to that in the English-language version of Scrabble. Each letter card has a numerical value, which is its score when used in a word. Players have a hand of seven cards, mirroring the seven-tile hand in Scrabble, and on your turn you use the cards to make a word of two letters or more, scoring the total value of the letters. In additional to their value, the letter cards are each in one of four suits; if you make a word using cards that are all from a single suit, the score for that word is doubled. In addition, there's a 5-point bonus for making a five-letter word, with an another 5 points added for each additional letter; and if you use all seven cards in your hand you get a further bonus of 20 points.
As an alternative to making a word from the cards in your hand, you can become a 'word thief' by using one or more of your cards to add to words placed by an opponent, either to extend the word or to split it to create two or more new words. You aren't limited to adding words as a prefix or suffix, you can add a letter in the middle of an opponent's word to make a new word. You score for the new words created, so there are potentially higher scores to be earned from being a 'word thief' than from putting down your own words, especially given the 5-point bonus for each letter in a word beyond four. You can't 'word thief' words you've played yourself on a previous turn and any words made from letters in a single suit are immune from being modified with a 'word thief' action. The rules prohibit players from 'stealing' a word by simply adding an S to make it plural, but in our plays at Board's Eye View that gave rise to some arguments over whether you could just add an S to modify a verb (adding S to the verb alter, for example, effectively depluralises the word: they alter; he alters).
More significantly where the rules lack clarity is what happens to words that have been subject to 'word thief' modification? Do they remain in their originator's play area? Do they move to the play area of the 'thief', so available for further modification by other players, including the player who first played the original words? Or do words get discarded once they've been subjected to a 'word thief' action? If modified words remain on the table, you can end up with an endless stream of repeated splits - taking the first letter off box, for example, using the B in another word and replacing it with another consonant like C or F, and making a similar change again. Switching ownership of the words when they are 'stolen' seems fairer. Removing altered words altogether keeps the game more manageable in terms of table space and has the advantage of forcing more original word creation, so that is probably the preferred option. You can of course try each of these as variants and adopt whichever you prefer.
Word Thief isn't a new game - it first appeared 30 years ago. I can't help but feel that its naming is its biggest handicap. Tho' the rules refer to players 'stealing' each other's words, that's really no more the case than in Scrabble, where players will often be adding a letter onto the start or end of a word. It's a word game not a heist game, and with a title that focused more on the wordplay and less on the larceny it could appeal to a much wider potential audience. It obviously mimics aspects of Scrabble but in many respects it's actually a better game. Unlike Scrabble, it's not predicated on players learning the various two-letter words in the dictionary, and it works as a three- or four-player game much better than Scrabble: Scrabble is fine as two-player head-to-head but if you increase the player count, the player whose turn follows the weakest player will almost always win because they'll be the principal beneficiary of turns that open up the board. That just doesn't apply in Word Thief.
It would be helpful to players to know the distribution of letters in the game but that's not shown on the cards or in the rules. I've added it below, with the scoring value of the letters in parenthesis. Ideally tho' a distribution list for Word Thief would show which suits the various letters were in.
A - 9 (1) H - 5 (2) O - 6 (1) V - 2 (6)
B - 3 (5) I - 6 (1) P - 2 (4) W - 4 (5)
C - 3 (3) J - 2 (8) Q - 1 (10) X - 1 (8)
D - 4 (2) K - 2 (6) R - 5 (2) Y - 2 (4)
E - 12 (1) L - 3 (3) S - 4 (1) Z - 2 (10)
F - 2 (4) M - 4 (4) T - 6 (1) wild - 4 (0)
G - 4 (5) N - 6 (1) U - 4 (1)
For anyone who enjoys word games, Word Thief is definitely worth checking out. If you're a keen Scrabble player you may even come to agree that it compares favourably with Scrabble! It's just a pity it isn't better marketed by Outset Media and Cheatwell Games, with a more appealing name and a decent distribution list for the letters.
(Review by Selwyn Ward)
