Upwords

''Upwords'' (at one time branded as ''Scrabble Upwords'' in the United States and Canada; and '' Topwords'' ''Crucimaster'', ''Betutorony'', ''Palabras Arriba'' or ''Stapelwoord'' in other countries) is a board game invented by Elliot Rudell and originally published by the Milton Bradley Company, now a division of Hasbro. Worldwide marketing rights to ''Upwords'' have been licensed to Spin Master Inc. by Rudell Design, LLC as of 2018. ''Upwords'' is similar to ''Scrabble'' or ''Words With Friends'', in that players build words using letter tiles on a gridded gameboard. The 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''. The memorization of two-letter words is considered a useful skill in this 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 Spin Master. As of August 2019 the game is being relaunched and will be available in other countries around the world. In the past and while under license from Hasbro, ''Upwords'' was available in about twenty languages. There have been national tournaments played in Hungary and Turkey.

Gameplay

Each player draws a tile; the one with the letter nearest to A will be the first to play. The tiles are returned to the draw pile.

Each player draws seven tiles to start the game. The first player forms a word with one or more of their tiles. The word must cover one or more of the four central squares. The player then draws more tiles to replace those played. Play continues to the left.

Subsequent players may put tiles on the board adjacent to and/or on top of the tiles already played, as long as all words formed are found in the dictionary being used and the rules below are followed. All words must read horizontally from left to right, or vertically from top to bottom.

All tiles played on a turn must form part of one continuous straight line of tiles across or down.

For example, if the word CATER is on the board, a player 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.

Restrictions on words are as follows:

* No words that are always capitalized
* No hyphenated words
* No words requiring an apostrophe
* No abbreviations or symbols
* No prefixes or suffixes which cannot stand alone
* No foreign words unless they are in the dictionary
* The 2008 edition included a new rule: Players may not pluralize a word simply by adding an S at its end. However, such a play is allowed if the S is part of another complete word that is played onto the board in the same turn. This rule is intended to prevent players from capitalizing on one another's words without changing them or playing new ones.

Restrictions on stacking tiles are as follows:

* No stack may be more than five tiles high.
* No tile may be stacked directly onto a duplicate of itself.
* At least one tile or stack must be left unchanged; a player may not cover every letter in a word on a single turn.

A player may choose to pass at any time, or discard one tile and draw a replacement instead of playing.

Once the draw pile is exhausted, the game ends when any player runs out of tiles, or every player passes in a single round.

Scoring

Any word with no stacked letters scores two points per tile, while a word containing stacked letters scores one point for every tile it contains. In the CATER/BELATED example above, CATER would score 10 points, while BELATED would score nine. Two bonus points are awarded for using the "Qu" tile in a one-level word, and 20 for using all seven tiles in one turn.

Players lose five points for every unused tile they hold at the end of the game.

History

Originally, ''Upwords'' was played on an 8×8 square board, with 64 letter tiles. Hasbro Europe later expanded the gameboard to a 10×10 matrix and 100 tiles, to accommodate the longer words frequently used in foreign languages such as German and Dutch. The 10×10 matrix is currently employed in worldwide versions of the game. The board is purposely smaller (has fewer tile positions) than ''Scrabble'' to encourage and even force the stacking up of letters upon letters. It does not have special squares such as "triple word scores" and "double letter scores" that require additional scoring calculations.

Letter Distribution

The letter distribution of the 8 by 8 version of Upwords is as follows:

64 tiles:

1 of each: F, J, K, Qu, V, W, X, Z

2 of each: B, C, G, H, R, Y

3 of each: D, L, M, N, P, S, U

4 of each: I, O, T

5 of each: A

6 of each: E

The letter distribution of the 10 by 10 version of Upwords is as follows:

100 tiles:

1 of each: J, Qu, V, X, Z

2 of each: K, W, Y

3 of each: B, F, G, H, P

4 of each: C

5 of each: D, L, M, N, R, T, U

6 of each: S

7 of each: A, I, O

8 of each: E

Other versions

In the early 1990s, Hasbro licensed electronic marketing rights to Microsoft, briefly making the game available electronically. Microsoft no longer has rights to ''Upwords''.

In 2013, ''Upwords'' was developed by indie software developers Lonely Star Software, under license from Hasbro. , Lonely Star Software continues to offer Upwords for smartphone and tablet play, under direct license from Rudell Design. The game was first released as an app for iOS devices. On 27 March 2014, Lonely Star released the app for Android platform devices.

Besides an updated version of ''Upwords'' that offers a 10x10 grid and 100 tiles, ''Upwords'' remains available in its "classic" 8×8 version, distributed by Winning Moves.

In late 2021 Elliot Rudell the inventor of original UPWORDS developed a second version, called HURRY UPWORDS. Developed as an app by Lonely Star Software, HURRY UPWORDS was released in early 2022. HURRY UPWORDS pits one player against the other with each player receiving the identical random letter mix in the same order of distribution. Players each play a 3-minute game challenge on their own gameboard, after which high score determines the winner of the competition.

References

{{Scrabble

Board games introduced in 1981
Scrabble variants