Litterarum

Litterarum is a compact word game inspired by Tim Fowers' Paperback and Shh of Chris Handy. Players try to score as many points as possible by building the most valuable words from available letters that are changing every round. Letters are drawn from every players' hand and played simultaneously. Then a player on the left of the one holding the "inspiratione" card must create the most valuable word from letters in play, being followed by player on his left. Letters in a word may repeat freely. Instead of standard letter cards players can play wild letters that can be used instead any other letter that is not currently in play. However, every wild letter card can be used in a word only once and does not score a point. Every standard letter is worth a point. A player with the most valuable word (in case of deuce a player with the least amount of wild letters used in a word or a player whose word value was not beaten) becomes a winner of the round. If a player doesn't want to score in a round, he may choose two other actions: getting an inspiration and passing. Inspiration can change owner only once per round, passing can be played anytime. The winner of the round adds one card from draw pile among letters in play and then takes two of them back to his hand. After that, a player on his left hand picks one letter and so on until all the letters are taken. Then a new round begins. When the winner of the round draws a "+1 littera" card, he puts it above the vowels card. From now, players repeat letter-picking phase for every such card in play, playing more letters, giving them more possibilities. Game ends when the draw pile is empty. Players play one last round, winner gets the vowels card and then every player counts the amount of cards in hand. A player with the most cards is a winner. If more players have equal amount of cards, a player with more wild letter cards in hand wins. In case of deuce a finalist sitting (clockwise) nearest to the player with inspiration card (or a player with an inspiration card himself) wins the game.