Game: Probe

Thread: Re: Review of the Two Player Rules for the No-Fun Crowd

shilinski — 2008-10-14T18:57:42+00:00

We played this in our family back in 1960s. We were not a big game-playing group, but this was one that did get played. I remember mostly playing two player with my mother. There were no bonus cards in the edition we had, but it did have decks of letter cards.

Some of the toughest words I remember were not long ones but strange ones. I remember once my cousin used "goatherd." The "th" got revealed early, and so her word went undiscovered because no one could see the syllable break between the "t" and "h". ("Syllable would have been a good word!) The record breaker of all time though was one I had. I refused to reveal it when it could not be guessed, and it took a half-dozen games before a determined assault revealed it: "squeegee."

Thread: Re: Review of the Two Player Rules for the No-Fun Crowd

glundee1 — 2008-10-14T13:55:16+00:00

Thanks for the review! My S.O. picked this up at the goodwill for 50 cents a while back, but I took one look at the rules and wrote it off as an inevitably disappointing bastard cousin of Scrabble. We may actually give it a try now. WAQF, huh? That must be either a "British-only" word or a new addition-- I thought I knew all the Q without U words.

Thread: Review of the Two Player Rules for the No-Fun Crowd

Friendless — 2008-10-14T08:00:26+00:00

My partner and I are Scrabble players of the worst type. I'm the type that knows all of the two and three letter words. She's the type that not only knows WAQF is a word, she knows what it means. We're the sort that you stopped playing Scrabble in order to avoid. So inevitably, when we discover a new word game we must play it so we can compare it to Scrabble.

That's what happened with Probe. We saw it on someone's game shelf and borrowed it so we could try it. We tried the standard rules (as described in this review: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/118263) and decided it sucked very very badly. We hated it. However we did notice the two player variant described in the rules, and decided to try that.

In the two player variant, each player takes two of the racks - each of which can hold 12 letter cards. BTW, it seems from the other review that not all editions come with letter cards - we don't have to write anything anywhere. Each player then uses one deck of letter cards per rack to make a word of up to 12 letters. Extra spaces at the beginning and end of the word can be replaced by dot cards, where dots essentially count as letters - so in effect, you form a 12 letter word.

Then, each player takes turns guessing a letter that the opponent may have in either of their words. If the opponent has any instance of that letter (including dot, remember) in either of their words they must reveal one occurrence and the guesser gets another turn. The rules of the game are that you must, on your turn, draw a card which instructs you to do something random, e.g. "Take an additional turn", or "Add 20 to your score". Remembering though that we were no-fun word-game puritans, we decided not to do that. If there is to be a victory in our household it will be earned with blood, sweat and tears, not with 20 point bonus cards. Shortly thereafter we discarded the scoring rules altogether, as we found that the bonus for discovering your opponent's words first was going to be a game winner. So we ended up just needing to find the opponent's words.

That suddenly made the game very tense! Each of us had set two 12-letter codes, and needed to defend them from the opponent. We played words like INDEPENDENCE, EPISTEMOLOGY, PHOTOGRAPHY, PORNOGRAPHY (maybe not your sort of word but it has no Es)... Each of us was smart enough to know from what letters had been revealed what our opponent might infer, so we'd know whether our word was in danger of being discovered. Depending on how strong you think your word is, you might choose to reveal more of it, giving it up as a lost cause, or to conceal it - when your opponent hit a letter there was a lot of thought given to which was the safest instance to reveal. Of course, if you had to think too hard, it was obvious you had another one, and the opponent would just ask again... so you could try to bluff your opponent by hesitating. In the end the game ended up being tense like Coda - you feared that any mistake would reveal the game-winning clue to your opponent and you'd suddenly lose.

Of course, it's not as good as Scrabble , but there's a lot of tension in this game and played with these rules the game has a lot to offer. Played with normal rules it may appeal to the "Games Are Meant to be Fun" crowd, but I was never one of them anyway.

Thread: Re: Probe -- Play Hangman Instead?

jackmitch — 2008-08-28T03:38:03+00:00

Very good review. Probe is one of our favorite family games for vacations and holidays. However, all the players need to be at approximately the same level of intellectual development for the game to work well. One of the great thrills in Probe is stumping opponents with words that are truly common words but which have unusual letter combinations that make them especially hard to guess, even with some of the letters exposed. Examples that immediately come to mind are "rhythm" and "vacuum."

Thread: Re: Spelling a guessed word wrong?

OldestManOnMySpace — 2008-08-18T04:01:15+00:00

The guess is incorrect, and the person whose word it is should say 'no' and not reveal the word. The guesser takes a 50 point penalty.

Thread: Re: Spelling a guessed word wrong?

GoldFox7478 — 2008-08-17T01:11:59+00:00

In the instance of the interrupt rule, if the player guessing the word ircorrectly spells the word, what is done?

Thread: Re: Spelling a guessed word wrong?

jupiterchild — 2008-08-03T18:23:57+00:00

If the player revealing the word spelled it wrong when laying down the cards, he is penalized 100 points.

The player guessing does so by guessing each letter, therefore if that player is not guessing the correct letters the word will not fully be revealed anyway.

http://www.aboardgamesdatabase.com/rules/probe/index.pdf

Thread: Spelling a guessed word wrong?

GoldFox7478 — 2008-08-03T16:49:59+00:00

We came across this rules problem. When a player correctly guesses another player's word but incorrectly spells the word, what should be done? Doe the wrong-spelling player get penalized for the incorrect spelling?

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ssgames — 2008-03-08T06:18:43+00:00

What we'd be spelling if we still played it today

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Gernspieler — 2008-02-16T17:27:45+00:00

Thread: Re: Probe -- Play Hangman Instead?

gary_webster — 2007-12-13T22:02:42+00:00

From the title, I expected a fairly negative review. Instead, I found a useful review that echoed my experience with the game, though it's been years since I've played it. I even have an older version of the game, with a letter on each of many, many cards that fit nicely into one of twelve slots, but otherwise the game is the same.

Good review.

Thread: Re: A 5-Player Game With My Young Kids. A Surefire Win for Dad?

Drew1365 — 2007-11-23T00:09:37+00:00

I haven't played this game in far too long, but it was definitely a staple in our home growing up. I have a couple copies of the card version (which I prefer), and I'm not getting rid of them!

Thread: Re: A 5-Player Game With My Young Kids. A Surefire Win for

OldestManOnMySpace — 2007-11-22T23:29:32+00:00

Nice session report! Just never use "syzygy" with them.

Thread: Re: A 5-Player Game With My Young Kids. A Surefire Win for

Cmot Dribbler — 2007-11-22T22:41:39+00:00

I love probe, i got two copies myself at home, i really need to break them out for a games night some time.

Thread: A 5-Player Game With My Young Kids. A Surefire Win for Dad?

fehrmeister — 2007-11-22T20:48:33+00:00

I was very impressed with my wife when she went garage-sale shopping a while ago, and returned with not one, but two good copies of the old game "Probe". I don't know if she had EVER bought a boardgame until then. Apparently, the person selling them had told her all about how educational this game was, and had in fact used it in her own class to teach her kids spelling. As a homeschooling mom, my wife thought this sounded like a good thing to try, especially given the price, and so we ended up with 2 copies of the "orange box" version, both in good condition.

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I soon got an opportunity to play it with my 4 oldest kids (ages 7-10). We had to use parts from both copies of the game, since one box only services 4 players. I explained how it worked over several minutes, including how to add dots to the front or back of a word to make it harder to guess. We had a dictionary handy which I encouraged the kids to use to pick their words. Only my 7-year-old twins took advantage of it though as my oldest two were keen on picking their own. I picked the word "TELEPHONES', hoping to give them a big target to shoot at, although I had contemplated using "STENTORIAN" at first. I always play to win against my kids, but I thought that playing a word game like this with them would be an easy runaway victory for me unless I eased up a bit.

It didn't take long after starting out for me to realize that this would probably be a very long game. After a few rounds, only a few letters had been revealed, and I think a couple of them still had their words completely covered. I went through the 'E', 'A', 'I', 'O' vowels with each of them as fast as I could, and wasn't turning up much. I was thankful for any card that came up which forced the player on the left or right to reveal a letter. Eventually, the children realized that they all had a lot of dots to uncover, and so many of those were revealed in a flurry about halfway through the game, including Sam's dots, of which there were eight!

Sam's word, which was obviously fairly small, ended up being one of the hardest to crack. Meanwhile, he was having the most success at guessing others' letters, and was helped out by some "multiply your score on your next guess" cards.

Bethany's word "POSTCARD" was the first to finally fall. I think my "TELEPHONES" word was second to go, and Samuel ended up getting some significant bonus points for uncovering final letters. It took a while before Isaac's "WILDCAT" was finally revealed. And it was surprisingly difficult to guess the last letter in Sam's word which began with the letters "PON". Bethany finally guessed a "Y" to finish it off. Adam's word "FREEZE" never did get guessed as the last word standing, and so he gladly earned a healthy bonus for that. His strategy of using a word with a "Z" was pretty effective.

Final Scores:
Sam (8 years old): 365
Bethany (10 years old): 215
Adam (7 years old): 165
Me (33 years old): 75
Isaac (7 years old): 10

This ended up being a lot more difficult for me than I thought it would be - a pleasant and amusing revelation. The game did last for over an hour, but that's really the only knock I would have against it. Otherwise, playing with more than 4 using 2 sets worked just fine. The kids really enjoyed it, and Sam was pretty proud of beating his father by such a large margin. I'm not sure how educational this is in regards to spelling (I can teach the kids how to spell a whole lot more than 5 words in an hour using other methods), but it certainly forced them to think about the composition of words and how letters are used in general. I think the next game will go a little faster now that they have this experience under their belts, but I don't think we'll play an 8-player game anytime soon.

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Haffner — 2007-09-18T07:55:48+00:00

a french edition

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Andre_g54 — 2007-09-13T09:29:14+00:00

1982 PROBE Word Game by: PARKER BROTHERS.

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TVis — 2007-05-15T19:21:49+00:00

Parker Brothers 1964

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glum — 2007-02-07T15:29:04+00:00

The beautiful typography and wonderfully muted colours of the 1970s cards.

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glum — 2007-02-07T15:26:25+00:00

Probe - 1970s edition - 65p and everything was there!

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glum — 2007-02-07T15:25:25+00:00

Probe - 1970s edition - a charity shop bargain

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FitisGames.be — 2007-01-05T16:54:11+00:00

French version

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pmboos — 2006-12-12T02:45:41+00:00

Contents of possible prior to 1964 version... Much more upscale feeling...

Thread: Re: Probe -- Play Hangman Instead?

happyjosiah — 2006-07-20T13:01:51+00:00

Thanx! It was my first review so I am glad at least someone found it useful.

Thread: Re: Probe -- Play Hangman Instead?

Drew1365 — 2006-07-19T23:18:26+00:00

Good review. Probe is one of my favorite word games. When played properly, it's a great game. It does, however, suffer from the invasion of "house rules" brought on by Wheel of Fortune, in that when someone guesses a letter, people think you should flip over EVERY instance of that letter.

The blanks/dots also make it quite strategic because it's a big risk to guess a blank.

And I do prefer the editions with the cards and card racks . . . but that's just nostalgia talking.

Thread: Probe -- Play Hangman Instead?

happyjosiah — 2006-07-19T18:02:32+00:00

My fiancee is an avid thrift store shopper and when she went clothes shopping I told her to see if they had any games that looked good. She grabbed Probe for me for 99c. I opened it up and was greeted by a bunch of long sheets of paper with blue crayon markings scribbled all over them. When I sorted through and threw away all the used papers, I was left with a deck of cards, a tablet of the long strips of paper, rules, and four orange trays. Upon reading the rules, I thought, "This sounds a lot like Hangman." Upon reading the BGG comments I thought "This sounds a lot like Hangman." Then I played it, and I was actually somewhat surprised.

Now, granted, this is an easy game to teach anyone who has ever played Hangman, but there is much more to it than that. First of all, each player chooses a word and writes it, one letter in each box, on one of the sheets of paper. The orange trays are then used to hold the paper, and the flaps cover the letters. Boxes not containing a letter are left open. "Now wait," you think, "so everyone knows how many letters long my word is before the game even really starts?" Well no. In one of the more ingenious additions to hangman, the Probe designers decided that you may also use dots. Dots are essentially spaces, but they start out covered by the tabs. You are limited to 5 dots, but do not have to use any. Dots must be place only at the begining or end of your word (or next to other dots). Thus, a typical word might be ".cellular..." As there are only 12 spaces, this also allows a word like "cellular" to start with all the tabs closed. Your board faces away from you, so all other players can see letters as they are revealed.

But wait! There's more! In the scoring of the game, a player gets points (5-15, depending on the tab) each time he guesses another player's letter. This also applies to guessing dots. Now here is where the balance comes in. You give other players the possibility of getting more points for each dot you use (no points can be scored for blanks, which start out open). However, it allows you to better conceal your word. The second way in which dots are balanced is in their guessing: You may guess "dot" instead of a letter from a person. If you are wrong though, you lose 50 points. When you simply guess a letter that isn't there, your turn just ends. Thus, dots are very common, but a high guessing risk. These are what really makes the game, in my opinion.

Alright, so each player has selected a word and dots and closed the tabs (except blanks). Now the fun begins. The first player reveals the top card of the draw pile. Most of them say "take your normal turn" basically meaning nothing exciting happens, but some do some pretty cool stuff. Some cards add instant points (10 or 20) and some even take away your points instantly (-10). Some force you to reveal a letter or dot of your choice from your own tray (Ouch! At least no other player gets points for this!). Some let you force the player to your left/right to reveal a letter or dot (YAY! you DO score points for this!). Some even let you take an additional turn as soon as your current one is finished (everyone's favorite).

Once the card has been dealt with, the player begins to guess. When guessing, you select a player and guess a letter or dot (but guessing a dot is risky, as discussed above). Now, this isn't Wheel of Fortune (or even hangman, in this regard). If Timmy's word is "apple" and you guess "p", you only see one of the "p"s (whichever one Timmy chooses to reveal). A correct guess allows you to keep guessing letters, from Timmy or from anyone else at the table. Other players will want to pay close attention so they do not repeat letters which have already received a "no" response from a given player. But keeping track of 2 or 3 other boards at the same time is very difficult, especially when even letters that have already been guessed once may still exist on that player's tray.

For revealing the final tab (letter or dot) from a player, you get 50 bonus points. For GUESSING a word which still has at least 5 tabs closed, you get 100 bonus points, plus all the points from the tabs which are then revealed. You can even guess the word when it isn't your turn. A wrong guess gets you -50 though, so you'd better be sure. Once your word is revealed though, you are not eliminated (thumbs up to this!) and in fact can still win. Play continues until only one player has a board with tabs still closed. Then everyone gets one more turn (including the player with the unguessed board, who simply draws a card and hopes for instant points, since he will have nothing to guess). However, being the last one with letters is a big deal, because if you are the last one and no one guesses your word by the end of the game, you get 50 points. If no one guesses it by the end and there are still 5 un-revealed tabs, you get 100 bonus points.

All in all, the point values are well balanced, the cards add fun and not confusion, there is no player elimination, no extensive vocabulary is required, and it goes far beyond hangman because of the management of so many words at the same time. Strategy is partly in your initial word choice, and partly in how you guess (dots or not?). Honestly, I am not a fan of word games. They seem to usually test knowledge rather than strategic ability or luck. (Trivia games also suffer from this, usually even moreso.) But this one can be played with people of all ages (as long as you pick words people have heard of) and is more about remembering guesses and taking risks than about knowing the biggest words. Even small words can do quite well as they give less points and have will require more trial and error. They also make it nigh-impossible for opponents to recieve the 100 point bonus, since you won't have 5 letters still closed by the time they guess it. A heavy dose of strategy makes this way more fun than hangman. Nevertheless, it is still a word game, and does have a healthy dose of luck. Not really my cup of tea, but if I HAD to play a wordgame, this would be it. The delightful snapping sound that the tabs make when they close is just the icing on the cake. 6.5 out of 10.

Thread: Re: Rules for Probe?

Valien — 2006-03-09T13:44:47+00:00

Here's the Hasbro link for the 1977 version - no alphabet cards.

http://www.hasbro.com/common/instruct/Probe(1977).PDF

Yay!

BTW, Hasbro also has links to the other versions as well via here -

http://www.hasbro.com/default.cfm?page=cs_instructions&lette...

Thread: Re: Rules for Probe?

Valien — 2006-03-09T02:58:28+00:00

Hmm, downloaded the rules for this tonight and it's for the version with the alphabet cards. Anyone have the rules for the non-alphabet card version? (just the flip tabs and drawing cards game)?

Thread: Re: Rules for Probe?

Jana798 — 2006-02-07T15:01:22+00:00

Try this link

http://www.aboardgamesdatabase.com/g11.htm

Thread: Re: Rules for Probe?

Bruce Linsey — 2006-01-25T05:05:38+00:00

Tried to go there and got this message:

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /rules/probe/index.pdf on this server.

So I'm still looking. Can anynoe send me a hard copy?

Thank you,
Bruce

Thread: Re: Rules for Probe?

Rulemonger — 2006-01-23T14:40:00+00:00

http://www.aboardgamesdatabase.com/rules/probe/index.pdf

You owe me: 45 seconds of Google time. :-)

Thread: Rules for Probe?

Bruce Linsey — 2006-01-23T03:29:06+00:00

Does anyone have a copy of the rules to Probe which they'd be willing to copy and send me? I'd be happy to cover your costs. Thank you,
Bruce Linsey

Thread: Session Report

Styro — 2005-04-28T14:27:21+00:00

Pulled Probe out last night to play with my wife. I had not played it since I was a kid (perhaps 15-20 years ago). My wife had never played it but enjoys word games. We decided that since there were only two of us we would not bother to keep score, but just see who could get the other person's word first.

I chose the word "philanthropy" which I thought was a great word (12 letters). My wife chose "icicle" and used 5 blanks. She realized that having a word with only 4 different letters was strategically better. She killed me. She had guessed all my letters except P, H, and Y and I had only gotten one I, the L, and the E. Cards from the deck made her reveal all five of her blanks over the course of the game. Once she guessed H she figured out my word. I used three more turns guessing letters on her (drew an extra turn card) and never guessed a C or another I.

Overall, I was not too impressed by the game. It is like multiplayer hangman. Perhaps I am bitter because I got beaten so soundly, but I am used to that from my wife and word games. We both agreed that with more than two people it might be a little more engaging. I will probably give this one more try, but I was unimpressed.

Thread: Two different forms, with cards and without...

snarke — 2004-03-01T20:18:35+00:00

It would appear that Probe has been published in two different forms. Most people seem to be familiar with a version that has a large deck of cards with letters and dots. My copy uses vaguely Scrabble-like trays with doors that snap down over a strip of paper.

Thread:

fmoros — 2002-10-29T15:21:17+00:00

Played with my wife and we liked it. If you are learning English, or any other language, get it!!!
I am very curious about why there are so many letters cards...(anyone knows why?) It means, that you can play this game in many other languages than English, than might use more H,LL,G,J.. even you can fake a couple of N as ~ ny for spanish. Also you can play with more than 4 people, by building a couple of paper racks!!!!
We like it. A bargain on ebay for 2 UKP, NEW!!!!