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Upwords is a board game invented by Elliot Rudell and published by Hasbro Games (a subsidiary of Hasbro). Upwords is similar to Scrabble, except that players can stack letters on top of other words to create new words. The higher the stack of letters (up to five) the more points are scored. This makes words built in later turns of the game often more valuable than earlier words, increasing play intensity. The game is available in about 20 languages. Hasbro, the worldwide license owner, has recently licensed electronic marketing rights to Microsoft, making it available electronically for the first time since AOL bought Games.com and ceased offering it.
Game play
Players draw letter tiles until they have seven on their rack. 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. The subsequent plays may put tiles on the board and on top of tiles already played, so long as all words formed are found in the dictionary being used.
For example, if the 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.
The game's scoring is well balanced in two senses: (1) players get more points for words if all the letters are on the first board layer points per tile, but (2) then they get more points as tiles get higher since you score for the tiles in your word and the tiles under your word point per tile.
Since Upwords lacks bonus squares like Scrabble, there have to be extra rules to keep people from capitalizing on other people's words and they do this by disallowing plurals that simply add an S.
Originally, Upwords was played on an 8×8 square board, which many players felt to be cramped relative to Scrabble's 15×15 grid. Newer Upwords sets come with a 10×10 square board, which allows for much more comfortable play.
There have been national tournaments played in Hungary and Turkey.
Unlike SCRABBLE, which is controlled by competitors Hasbro (in the U.S.) and Mattel (in Europe), UPWORDS is at this time solely under the worldwide licensing control of Hasbro Games, making it the only such worldwide word game property that can be internet-marketed and internet-offered with complete licensing control.
External links
"Upwords"