Festive mini games - Day 5 "Scrabble chess"

This year I am sharing 24 mini games over advent, where the rules can be explained on the back of a single business card. Today's game is called "Scrabble chess". 

I love little games, that take moments to explain and thinking of new games to play with objects people often already have. So, I set myself a challenge to collect and create as many business card games as possible.

Day 5 "Scrabble chess"

Players: 2 players

Equipment: Scrabble tiles and a chess board

Concise rules: 

Place all tiles face up next to the chess board. Take turns picking and placing 1 tile anywhere on the board. If you make a word, 4 letters long or longer, you score the points from the scrabble tiles. Remove the tiles you made a word with. Continue until all tiles have been used. Most points win. 

Notes:

Hacking game components together into new games is nothing new. People have been doing this for years. Home rules for games is common. This hack of a game keep the core mechanic of scrabble but by adding the 1 tile at a time limit from a community pool you change the feel of the game. Firstly it speeds up the turns and secondly it makes it less of a spelling game and more of a strategy game. You don't need to find the longest highest value word that fit on an increasingly tangled board. Instead, you need to think more about what your opponent will do next and how you can set up future scores. 

The core mechanic of this game is taken from WoRDWeRX, a James Earnest game that was part of the Chief Herman's Holiday Fun Pack collection. WoRDWeRX is a paper and pen game played on a 5 x 5 grid where each letter can only be used once. James Earnest's work was a big inspiration behind this project. 

The jpg below shows the print file used, the print company requires the sections to be embossed in gold to be pure black. 

Game extension/variation: 

If you want a quicker game, reduce the number of tiles you use. If you want a faster game make the play area smaller, you don't need to use a chess board (but we found a scrabble board was too big). Also, you can play it just with a paper and pencil if you have a list of the scrabble tiles. If the game gets too easy, you can always up the minimum word length from 4 letters to 5, 6 or more. 

A very complex challenge is to have an increasing minimum letter word rule. So the first word you make is 4 letters, the second 5 and then 6 etc. Both players independently need to go through the progression of numbers. In this version, you don't have to keep score, the winner is the player who makes the longest successful word. 

Bit of admin: 

Some of the games I am sharing are classic parlor games (look for the top hat symbol), some are original creations by me (with the fish symbol) and a couple are hacks of games using common board game bits (the cog symbol). It was a bit of guess work on some of the games, I may have called a game an original creation because I can't remember reading it anywhere but I might have played it at a party or youth group a couple of decades ago. If you know a source for a game I have shared as an original please let me know.