Game: Unspeakable Words

Thread: Re: Video Review — Unspeakable Words

chaosjenkins — 2008-11-05T07:23:18+00:00

Thanks. I believe you'll find the components are a hugely endearing factor, but it's also just a charming game. No cornerstone of your collection, mind you, but a clever filler game that shows how even a light theme can enhance the experience if it is well enough conceived and implemented.

As you clearly appreciate the Mythos, you should also enjoy the playful card art that works on a couple of different levels.

Thread: Re: Video Review — Unspeakable Words

ckirkman — 2008-11-05T06:05:08+00:00

Thanks for the review. You and the little mini Cthulhus sold me!

Image

sauceybugger — 2008-11-03T07:27:27+00:00

Big C having the nap of Strange Eons. I love his little Octo-Teddy. The crab nipping his blanket shows he is dreaming under the Sea.

Thread: Re: Video Review — Unspeakable Words

Teriyaki Donuts — 2008-10-15T22:48:19+00:00

Very nice, Josh! Thanks for taking the time to do this.

Thread: Re: A Video Review

Mr Thijs — 2008-10-15T12:29:53+00:00

Please more of this!
You add realy something to BBG because most of the videos are about euro's and abstracts

Thread: Video Review — Unspeakable Words

chaosjenkins — 2008-10-15T08:57:49+00:00

The http://nonstoptabletop.com review of “Unspeakable Words” a Cthulhu Mythos-themed word game.

At A Glance: A quick, fun "filler" word game with a Lovecraftian twist.

Reviewer’s score on the BoardGameGeek.com 1-10 scale: 7.5

Vimeo Video

Thread: Re: Have you noticed? (Q's and other things)

Barliman — 2008-04-17T15:22:20+00:00

kuhrusty wrote:
"I" is the one which bugs me.
Aha! The "is for Ithaqua" uses a font without the cross-bars. Running through the deck, I see that J also has that problem. I found no other discrepencies.

That's not as disturbing to me as the Q, where in the corner when you fan your cards you see a 2 behind a Q which has 4 corners, but I agree that it should be fixed.

The idea occurred to me of having this be a feature: have letters without cross-bars in the top corners, and with cross-bars in the bottom corners, and you can choose which to use according to your current situation. So I counted the corners in the upper-case letters of three popular fonts: Arial, Times New Roman, and Courier:

A 5 9 10
B 5 7 7
C 0 1 1
D 2 4 4
E 4 8 8
F 3 9 9
G 2 4 4
H 4 12 12
I 0 4 4
J 0 2 2
K 4 11 11
L 1 5 5
M 3 9 9
N 2 7 7
O 0 0 0
P 3 6 6
Q 4 2 3
R 5 7 7
S 0 2 2
T 2 6 6
U 0 4 4
V 1 5 5
W 3 9 7
X 4 12 12
Y 3 9 7
Z 2 4 4
Total 62 158 156

The cross-bars add so many new corners -- there are about 2.5 times as many -- that it wouldn't fit the basic game. You'd have to change the game-winning total to 200 and use two D20's for the Sanity Check, or something like that. Oh well.

Anyway, I don't mind their basing the letter "I" score on cross-bars: people often use cross-bars anyway, to distinguish capital I from lower-case L and numeral 1. Even this font here, which uses very few cross-bars, does have cross-bars for I and J. But they should make the font consistent on the cards, to avoid annoying the players.

I bet that the game designers discussed the issue of which font to use, and the score to assign to each letter, but the artists at the publisher were not told about those constraints.

Thread: Re: Have you noticed? (Q's and other things)

kuhrusty — 2008-04-17T06:46:56+00:00

"I" is the one which bugs me.

Thread: Health and Curses: adding more choices, and player interaction

Barliman — 2008-04-16T14:03:23+00:00

My family and I enjoy this game a lot, and we've played it a lot, but I do have a couple of frustrations with it:

- There are not enough strategic options; when your luck is bad, it's bad. It would be nice to add something to balance it out, especially to apply your surplus from very high Sanity Checks to later turns.

- There is no catch-up mechanism. Once a player gets even 10 points ahead it's very likely they'll win, and there's nothing you can do about it, there being no direct player interaction.

This is my variation to address these issues. You'll need a bunch of extra dice to play it (you have them, right?). Comments are quite welcome. Enjoy!

Health and Curses: A Rules Variation for Unspeakable Words
Bryan Stout

1. Setup.

Put a moderate number of dice in the game's box lid; these will be called Health Dice to distinguish from the Sanity Die that comes with the game. You can use either regular 6-sided dice or polyhedral dice (D4, D6, D8, D10, D12). You won't need D20's (or larger); and use only dice numbered 1 thru N (eg. not 00/10/20/.../90). You can decide how many dice you want to use, but have at least two regular dice per player, or a set of polyhedral dice for each two players.

2. Getting Health Dice.

Basics. When you do a Sanity Check, the difference between the Sanity Die and your word's value represents extra mental health and may be used to "purchase" Health Dice, which are taken from the box and placed before you. Each Health Die costs one point per side, and you may buy more than one die if you have enough points. Ex: if your word was worth 6 and you roll 19, the difference is 13 and you can get 2 regular dice, or one D12, or a D10, or a D8 and D4, or D6 and D4.

Limits. If using polyhedral dice you may not own more than one Health Die of any size at a time (eg. you can't buy a D4 if you already have a D4 in front of you). Unused health points are lost and not usable in later turns. If there are no available Health Dice in the box (at least of the sizes you can purchase), you are out of luck and the points are lost.

3. Using Health Dice.

Basics. When you do a Sanity Check you may roll any or all Health Dice you have. Choose before you roll, and roll all the dice simultaneously. The total value of the dice is compared against the word's value, with a successful roll if the total is greater than or equal to the word value. After the roll, return the used Health Dice to the box.

Consequences. If the Sanity Check is a failure even with the Health Dice, you lose one Cthulhu Pawn for each die you rolled. If you fail any Sanity Check, all unused Health Dice you own are returned to the box, though you don't lose Pawns for those you didn't roll.

Limits. You may not use Health Dice for any word that would make you win the game. A roll of 20 on the Sanity Die is still an automatic success -- the Health Dice do not count towards that, even if the total is 20 or greater. After returning used Health Dice to the box you may purchase more Health Dice, based only on the value of the Sanity Die.

4. Cursing with Health Dice

Cursing. During your turn you may Curse another player by placing one of your Health Dice in front of them (these are now called Curse Dice). You must then do a Sanity Check on the size of the die, eg. you must roll a 6 or higher if you Curse with a D6, 12 or higher if you Curse with a D12. You may use other Health Dice in your Sanity Check for the Curse. If you fail the Check you lose one Cthulhu Pawn per die rolled, but the Curse still happens anyway.

Being Cursed. A player making a Sanity Check for their word must roll all the Curse Dice they have along with the Sanity Die (and any Health Dice), and subtract their values from the total before it is compared with the word value. They do not lose additional Cthulhu Pawns because of them, though, like they might for Health Dice. After being rolled, the Curse dice are returned to the box. A player with Curse Dice may choose to dodge the curse by discarding their hand and drawing a new one; the Curse Dice are then returned to the box unrolled, and they score zero for the turn. (In this case it is recommended that the Spell Binding rule not be used.)

Limits. During a Sanity Check a 20 on the Sanity Die still is a success, however many Curse Dice there are. A player may cast as many Curse Dice as he has, and they may be against the same or different players. They are cast one at a time, and a Sanity Check is done on each one before casting others. They may be cast at any point in the turn, including just after purchasing them. Curse Dice are rolled even if the player is trying to score a game-winning word, even though Health Dice may not be rolled.

While typing this up, I thought of an additional twist I haven't tried yet: Once per turn a player may Curse with a die directly from the box. Two Sanity Checks are made against the size of the die, with normal consequences.

Thread: Have you noticed? (Q's and other things)

Barliman — 2008-04-16T02:49:14+00:00

It's interesting how different people notice different things. In a store, my kids will see the toys, candy, balloons, etc. immediately, while I may not see them at all unless pointed out (which they can be counted on to do). This applies to Unspeakable Words as well.

We had played the game several times before my 9 year old daughter noticed that each card has two things starting with its letter: a Mythos creature and a regular object. For example, a Deep One and a donut. So of course we went through all the cards to identify what the normal object was for each letter. For "C", I said "Cthulhu and catnap", which was accepted until tonight she noticed it also had a crab.

What I had noticed was on the game-play side: there is a discrepancy on the Q card. The letters in the corners, the large letter in the background, and the statement "is for [whatever]" are all in different fonts, and it makes a difference for Q's. The Q is listed as worth 2 points, and the Q in "is for Quachil Uttaus" does indeed have 2 angles, since the little line goes up to the circle but not through it (like the Q in the fonts used here in posts). But the Q in the background and the corners does go through, yielding 4 corners. It's jarring to see two points with a letter that obviously has 4 corners. If they do another printing, I hope they fix that -- changing the font or the points.

Thread: Re: the origin of Unspeakable Words

mike selinker — 2008-04-05T02:14:46+00:00

Barliman wrote:
What role did James Ernest play in the game development?

Well, he's my design partner (one of them, anyway), so he made sure it was good. There are definitely games we've done that are more me or more him, but both of us contribute ideas and development to all of them to make sure we're both happy with it.

He was most specifically NOT in my dreams.

Mike

Thread: Re: the origin of Unspeakable Words

Barliman — 2008-03-30T14:36:50+00:00

Thanks for sharing the story!

What role did James Ernest play in the game development?

Thread: Re: Cards adding to San Rolls

The Warp — 2008-03-28T00:20:20+00:00

In our last game, we moved to having to use a card that wasn't part of your word (BEFORE rolling) to add its point value to the die roll. It's much better this way.

Furthermore, the next turn, you only replenish your hand up to the number of cards used to make the word (not replenishing cards used to add to the die roll). You don't get to replenish to 7 cards until you use every letter in your hand to spell a word.

This definitely upped the ante for us and made the game even more nervewrackingly fun.

Thread: Cards adding to San Rolls

The Warp — 2008-03-22T03:51:23+00:00

We've tried a new variant where you can play cards you don't use on words to add to your san roll. Whatever value the card has may be added to the roll.

Originally we used it for after the roll was made, but we're now thinking of making it something you do before you roll.

Thread: Re: the origin of Unspeakable Words

mike selinker — 2008-03-12T00:31:17+00:00

That's one big reason I wanted to make the game, Steve. I was tired of word games where most people wouldn't play with me because I have a large vocabulary (son of a lawyer and a linguist, waddaya want). I wanted one where having a huge vocabulary can kill you. And here it does.

Anyway, thanks all for the kind words.

Mike

Thread: Re: the origin of Unspeakable Words

steveoliverc — 2008-03-11T23:59:26+00:00

Great story! (and a great game, too!) This game is a big hit with gamers who claim "they don't like word games" since it's so much about pushing your luck.

Thread: Re: the origin of Unspeakable Words

stormseeker75 — 2008-03-11T17:09:39+00:00

Great story Mike. UW is quite a lot of fun. I like the fact that its light and random.

Thread: Re: the origin of Unspeakable Words

diablo663 — 2008-03-11T17:05:36+00:00

This is a very fun game and I have taught it to non-gamers and they loved it as well!!
I LOVE the Cthulu pawns.

Thread: the origin of Unspeakable Words

mike selinker — 2008-03-11T16:44:53+00:00

I don't think I've told the origin of Unspeakable Words publicly, and this seems like a fine place to do so. Let me know if you like this story.

Unspeakable Words was a game that first ran at D&D designer Monte Cook's house some years ago. The day before it was invented, I played a game of the original Arkham Horror, dying on the second turn when I took a little walk with Ithaqua in the Dreamlands. Later in the evening, I played a cutthroat game of Scrabble with Monte's wife Sue. And then I went to bed.

The melange of Arkham Horror and Scrabble was obviously bubbling into my unconscious during the night. I woke up the next morning with Unspeakable Words fully formed in my head. As I struggled to consciousness, I kicked over my nightstand and somehow found a pen and paper to write it down. I called the game "Hounds of Tindalos," after the nasty creatures that come out of the corners of the walls.

It quickly became a favorite at all the conventions, and of the Chaosium guys. my co-designer James, Dan and Elisa at Playroom, and our playtesters all made improvements over time, but the game design is pretty much the same as the one as I woke up with.

So when I say "I could design that game in my sleep!", I mean it.

Mike

Thread: Re: C is for Cthulhu. I is for Insanity!!

stormseeker75 — 2008-03-08T16:42:38+00:00

ralpheous wrote:
I've never played the game, but after reading your review a rule variant to increase player interaction leapt to mind:
Before the player rolls the insanity check, other players can sacrifice cards from their hand to modify the roll. My initial thought was to give a -1 for each point the card was worth, but that might lead to too much insanity too quickly. Maybe -1 on the die roll for each card tossed.

then it's like you are practicing some dark art.

Thats definately got some merit to it. I'd have to try that one out.

Thread: Re: C is for Cthulhu. I is for Insanity!!

Keziah — 2008-03-08T15:33:52+00:00

Thanks for the brilliant review.
Its now on my wishlist, and we are going to order it soon to play with our usual gaming group.
There are a few Cthulhu and word game heads there that will appreciate it no end

Thread: Re: C is for Cthulhu. I is for Insanity!!

ralpheous — 2008-03-07T21:41:25+00:00

I've never played the game, but after reading your review a rule variant to increase player interaction leapt to mind:
Before the player rolls the insanity check, other players can sacrifice cards from their hand to modify the roll. My initial thought was to give a -1 for each point the card was worth, but that might lead to too much insanity too quickly. Maybe -1 on the die roll for each card tossed.

then it's like you are practicing some dark art.

Thread: Re: C is for Cthulhu. I is for Insanity!!

stormseeker75 — 2008-03-07T17:41:14+00:00

Thank you sir! I appreciate your kind words and I'm glad that you and your family enjoy the game so much as well.

Thread: Re: C is for Cthulhu. I is for Insanity!!

drmabuse00 — 2008-03-07T17:08:45+00:00

Excellent review Steve!

My wife loves this game but both my daughter and I (having played Arkham Horror) found the game disappointing, with it's lack of theme and it's heavy reliance on luck ( as you pointed out). We have played with the optional rules and have found that the game was more enjoyable and created a little more of theme that we (my daughter and I) needed but I wished that they had incorporated those into the main rules from the beginning. My daughter has come up with a brilliant (objectively speaking, of course) variant which I will post in the near future.

Keep up the great work, I look forward to reading your upcoming reviews.

Thread: C is for Cthulhu. I is for Insanity!!

stormseeker75 — 2008-03-06T19:41:16+00:00

I tend to enjoy word games. I was always quite good at vocabulary in school and I loved learning new words. While my vernacular may not be as robust as others, I try to use big words whenever I can. I'm also a big Cthulhu fan so when I saw a game combining my love of Cthulhu with the fun of a word game, I was obviously interested. Unspeakable Words is the game in question, a game which features spelling, Cthulhu and a healthy dose of die chucking fun. So would Unspeakable Words be powerful enough to bring joy and satisfaction, or would it be too terrible to mutter again?

Rules

Unspeakable Words is a game for 2-5 players. To start, give each player 5 Cthulhu pawns. Shuffle the deck, and deal each player 7 cards.

On a player's turn, the player may play cards to spell a single word. Words can only be used once per game, but plural forms and singular forms are considered different. The player adds up the total points of the word and then roll the 20-sided die. If their roll is higher or equal than their score, they pass the Insanity Test. If they fail, they still score the points, but they must give up one of their Cthulhu pawns. A roll of 20 is always a success and a roll of 1 is always a failure. Once a player loses all 5 pawns, they are eliminated from the game. After the player's turn is over, they draw cards until their hand size is 7.

A player may instead discard their hand and draw 7 new cards, but this takes their entire turn and they do not get to play a word.

The first player to reach 100 is the winner. However, in order to score the winning points, the player must pass the Insanity Roll. If they fail, they score no points and lose a Cthulhu pawn.

Components

Unspeakable Words doesn't have many components, but the ones it does have are very nice.

To start, the box is well designed graphically, but like all Playroom games, the box is much larger than it needs to be. This seems to be their default box size because its exactly the same as Cowabunga, Cosmic Cows, and Knights of Charlemagne. Like all these games they use a simple insert to keep the components where they belong. Even with all the wasted space, the box is quite sturdy and it has great artwork.

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The rulebook is laid out very well with clear examples and an easy to read typeface. There shouldn't be many questions once the rules are read. The rulebook also features 2 additional languages in addition to English.

The D20 is a standard D20 that is clear with black writing. My only complaint about this die is that it can be hard to see if you're playing on a busy tablecloth like the one in my mom's kitchen.

I think everyone's favorite part of the game is probably the Cthulhu pawns. These little pawns are made of green plastic and have creepy black eyes, just like the Great Old one himself. These pawns are indeed a slightly cartoonish visage of great Cthulhu, crouched in a position that makes them look like they're ready to attack.

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At its very essence, Unspeakable Words is a card game. The game revolves around the cards and could function perfectly without any of the other components. Luckily, the cards are of a really good quality. The stock is just a bit thinner than I would like, but this is the same as with the other Playroom games mentioned earlier. They seem to be just a bit thinner than I would really like, but they are not too thin and should hold up reasonably well. The cards are coated with a slightly textured semi-gloss finish that makes the cards shuffle incredibly well. Each of the cards is adorned with some kind of artwork derived from the Cthulhu Mythos, as well as a saying, such as "C is for Cthulhu". The artwork is usually a cartoonish drawing of some of Lovecraft's monsters. I like the drawings because they keep the game light and fun and they also keep the game kid-friendly.

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Each card also has its letter in each corner along with a number. The number is how many points the card is worth.

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Gameplay

The basic gameplay is very simple. On your turn, you either need to make a word, or discard your hand and draw new cards. There's not really a lot of choices, but thats not really what the game is about.

Unspeakable Words is a push-your-luck game. No matter how big or small your word, you have to roll the die for your Insanity Roll. Even the smallest words can result in failure and after 5 failures you are eliminated. To this end, you need to at least try to have a game plan. If you constantly go for low numbers, the odds are in your favor that you will succeed. However, you will not score a lot of points and you're basically relying on waiting for the endgame to take big risks. This is a reasonable strategy, but the rolling of the die ruins that idea. Like I said, even low numbers can fail the Insanity checks. Another option is to go for medium sized words in the range of 8-12 and hope for good luck. Those numbers make rolling the die practically a coin toss, so you're definately pushing your luck a lot more. No matter what you do, you're going to occassionally draw really good cards that combine into a big word with too many points to deny. The odds will be against you, but you're better off trying it and failing the roll. Usually this can give you a good lead, even without rolling successfully. When you do hit on a big word, you'll be rewarded even more on a passing Insanity check. Don't forget, a roll of 20 is automatically successful no matter how big the word score is.

Players are largely at the mercy of the die roll and the draw of the cards and there really is no way to mitigate it. If you get unlucky, you will lose, guaranteed. But the way Unspeakable Words plays, this is not really a problem. The game is fast and fun. You can't take it seriously because there is way to much luck. I feel thats partly why the cards feature cartoon-like artwork. It contributes to the light feeling and keeps the game from getting to serious. If players treat this as anything more than a light word game, they'll all be sorely disappointed.

For those of you out there who dislike games with low interaction, this is not the game for you. There's no way to interact with other players. Its basically a race to 100 points with each player trying to do it as quickly as possible. The only way you could influence your opponents in this game is if you were a practitioner of some sort of magic or mystic art. If you have telekenisis, you could move the die for them. But lacking magical powers, there's no player interaction.

A large part of the fun of Unspeakable Words is the die rolling. Even when its not your turn, you'll find yourself waiting and hanging on every die roll. Players try to will the die their way and its not unusual for some loud cheering and trash talk when a roll is failed. This is most of the fun and in that regard, Unspeakable Words almost feels like a party game. If everyone sat there quietly, the game would lose a lot of its personality and flair.

The designers also included some interesting variant rules which I think could add a lot of spice to the game. These options include replenishing Cthulhu markers by discarding your hand, creating jibberish words when you only have one Cthulhu marker left, and a few others. While not integral to gameplay, this could certainly add a lot of replayability to the game.

I think that Unspeakable words could be a great game to play with kids who are learning to spell. The game is simple enough to work with almost any words, so even small words that kids make would work just fine. This is a great way to get your kids interested in vocabulary and reading because the theme is fun and the artwork is cute. All kids need a little Cthulhu in their life and this is a great way to make sure they get the recommended daily dosage.

Theme

If you're a Cthulhu Mythos fan, you'll enjoy the artwork and the references to classic Lovecraftian characters. But in all reality, the game has nothing to do with Cthulhu. The theme is pasted on quite well, but it adds a fun new dimension. Without it, I probably would have been much less interested. It wouldn't make the gameplay any worse, but it wouldn't make the game stand out from classic word games like Scrabble and Boggle either.

Compare it to...

Boggle and Quiddler mixed together. Much like Boggle, once a word is used, it can't be used again. And like Quiddler, its a card game that gives you points based on the word you build. The playtime is pretty much in line with Quiddler although it may be a bit shorter.

Overall

All things considered, I really like Unspeakable Words. Its a quick playing word game that satisfies my joy of words without being as dry as Scrabble. It has fun attractive art and good components. Most importantly, the press-your-luck nature of the game adds another dimension to the gameplay and keeps it light and fun. For a filler game, I can't ask for much more. When you add the Cthulhu theme in to the mix, you have a winner in my book.

I rate Unspeakable Words 7/10. Its a game that I really enjoy, its just too light to rate much higher that that. Still I may increase it to an 8 because I can see myself suggesting this one and definately not turning down a game.

If you're in the market for a word game that has a cool theme and is easy to play and fun at the same time, Unspeakable Words is definately the game for you. Easy rules make it easy to teach. The light nature of gameplay can make it a hit with non-gamers. And the speed and fun of the game is enough to make people come back for more. The next time someone wants to play Scrabble or Boggle, grab Unspeakable Words instead.

Thread: Unspeakable Kids - modding Cthulu

hseldon — 2008-02-21T23:30:47+00:00

This has become a great kids game. What? A game in which you go insane? A Cthulu game for kids? Can't be! Something must be wrong! Nope, here is how our first game went with my 6 year old daughter.

She is a pretty voracious reader and gamer. We got this for Christmas and once she saw the little Cthulu monsters, she wanted in. I didn't think that it would go well for her and we thought about teaming her up with someone to play it. Nope. She wanted to play it on her own.

We went through the rules with her and dealt an open hand to try it out. She cracked up over some of the drawings and agreed with her mom that the little Cthulus looked like little weird frogs (One should never insult Cthulu btw). She was able to form several small words of three to four letters and we explained the dice rolling and what would happen if she did not make the appropriate roll. She seemed to get it, so off we went.

We gave her an extra Cthulu to start as we thought that would help keep her in the game longer. It would have helped me, that's for sure. We had her go last, much to her dismay. She was able to see the results of my high point words and failed sanity checks. This brought out much laughing at my expense. Stinker. As you would expect, her words were short, low point affairs. The grown-ups who knew better were creating interesting words with high point totals. And losing Cthulus at a rapid rate.

After a few rounds, she was right in the game. Only about 6 points behind the leader and she had four Cthulus left while the rest of us were down to two or three. Maybe she had a good idea with small words as we started copying her! After a few more turns, I went insane when I tried to roll a 16. Making gibberish was confusing to her, but once another grown-up lost their marbles, she started to get it. She tried to make her own gibberish, but she was still sane and we had her go back and make a real word. Which she did and lost a Cthulu when she rolled a 2.

Now the grown-ups had pulled away from her by a bit, but she wasn't fazed. Would you be if you had three Cthulus and everyone else had gone mad from the evil, horrible words? Her uncle came up with some gibberish that would put him n the lead if he rolled a 14. He didn't. Bye bye! She laughed herself silly as he gave us a good impersonation of a person who had seen Cthulu eating his brains. With salsa.

Here is where it got tricky. She missed another roll and was down to 2 Cthulus. Her mom, myself and her aunt all had one left and were having fun trying to pronounce low scoring words. Unfortunately I could not pronounce Gjbalox correctly for Cthulu and he showed me his displeasure when he made my roll come out a 4. My sister laughed so much that she could not pronouce her word to Cthulu's pleasure and she was out too.

It was down to my wife and my daughter. My wife was playing it safe and scoring as few points as possible and doing a remarkable job of pronouncing them correctly as evidenced by her high rolls of the die. My daughter came up with a high point word which put her ahead of my wife. She failed her roll though and was down to one Cthulu, which made her happy as she could then make up words too.

My wife's insanity caught up with her though. She was pushing some gibberish and I think she got the initial phoneme of pxtg wrong. Cthulu punished her appropriately by abandoning her and leaving her to her madness. That left my daughter. By herself. Facing Cthulu. What a brave little girl, all alone. Her parents and family dead and devoured. She laid out and pronounced "Olob" Cthulu smiled upon the brave little girl and blessed her die roll. She won. Stinker.

One of the other things that we do that make this game a lot of fun is using the word we make in a sentence with Cthulu. My daughter really enjoyed that too. So not only did she have fun, she reinforced her phonics skills, her spelling skills, her ability to make creative sentences, her basic math skills, learned some basic ideas of probabilities, she also beat a bunch of grown-ups.

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rvinyard — 2008-01-20T05:57:15+00:00

Unspeakable Words Card Back

Thread: A great game for all the family & great with just 2 players

mudshark_baby — 2007-11-25T11:45:03+00:00

This is a very simple word scoring game. Each letter is scored based on the number of angles within the letter. The longer the word with greater-angled letters will get you to the target 100 total quicker.

However, after each turn you have to roll a 20 sided dice equal to or above your score. If you fail you lose a cthulhu idol. You start the game with 5 and when you lost the last one, you're out. Great for a 2 player game as this aspect really controls how risky you feel you should be as it is easy to go insame (losing all your cthulhu idols) just before you make 100 points.

The cards are designed nicely and whilst it comes in a large box, by virtue of it being a card game with a dice and 30 idols, it is the perfect travel game.

Fun, simple and educational for all the family. It states age 10 to adult but I believe it is accessible far below this age for spelling.

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mudshark_baby — 2007-11-25T11:27:12+00:00

Set up and ready to play

Thread: Re: Why is an 'I' worth four points? I'll tell you . . .

bwridge — 2007-11-22T06:25:31+00:00

They're non-euclidian serifs, so therefore spooky...

Brian

Thread: Re: Is it playable in any language?

Drew1365 — 2007-11-09T05:09:40+00:00

I'd say it really doesn't matter, given that there really isn't much of a game here anyway. Go ahead.

Thread: Re: Is it playable in any language?

tinderfire — 2007-11-09T04:29:18+00:00

I suppose this is similar to language-specific Scrabble games...

Thread: Re: Is it playable in any language?

Der Ubermolch — 2007-11-08T22:09:05+00:00

I would say you cannot play Unspeakable Words in any language other than English, unless there are cards specifically designed for those languages. There are two reasons for this. 1) There will be missing letters or extra letters. The N with a tilde is not present in unspeakable words. Perhaps you can ignore this (count N as either normal N or N with tilde) for Spanish, French, and other langauges where the differences between English and the foreign alphabet are small, but for languages like Czech, Turkish, and Hungarian, which have many different modified letters, the game would be broken. 2) The letter distribution -- how many cards have a letter on it -- will not be representative of how often the letter appears in your language. There are two Ws in Unspeakable words, but only one Q. Spanish uses the letter Q a lot more than English does, and almost never uses the W; so you'll find yourself saying, "Gee, I wish this W were a Q" a lot. Turks will find that there aren't nearly enough Ks or Zs, but will wonder what to do with the Q, W and X. This will almost certainly be a universal phenomenon.

Thread: Is it playable in any language?

jrv666 — 2007-11-08T08:23:32+00:00

Hi! As I'm from Spain and most of my friends can't speak english, I wonder if the game could be played in any language...

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dan4th — 2007-10-30T02:42:07+00:00

Marshmallow fight!

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dan4th — 2007-10-30T02:40:59+00:00

Mini Cthulhus like mini marshmallows

Thread: Re: Why is an 'I' worth four points? I'll tell you . . .

atholbrose — 2007-10-28T04:14:12+00:00

Drew1365 wrote:
. . . it's because they put serifs on it! The 'I' is the only letter for which they've bothered with serifs! If they added serifs to the 'A' it would be 9 freakin' points!

Those are not serifs, those are cross-bars. Note that the default BGG font is non-serif, and it has cross-bars on the I.

Thread: Re: Why is an 'I' worth four points? I'll tell you . . .

Drew1365 — 2007-10-27T21:10:30+00:00

The use of Comic Sans would wake Tsathoggua from his slumber.

Thread: Re: Why is an 'I' worth four points? I'll tell you . . .

LetsGetTrivial — 2007-10-27T21:05:29+00:00

Would you have preferred a Comic Sans font instead?

Thread: Why is an 'I' worth four points? I'll tell you . . .

Drew1365 — 2007-10-27T20:29:09+00:00

. . . it's because they put serifs on it! The 'I' is the only letter for which they've bothered with serifs! If they added serifs to the 'A' it would be 9 freakin' points!

This is crazy and I've failed my sanity check!

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Buggy — 2007-10-26T01:52:02+00:00

Unspeakable Brains

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kilroy_locke — 2007-10-24T04:47:32+00:00

Cthulhu Pep Squad!

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kilroy_locke — 2007-10-24T04:46:51+00:00

7 Cards, 25 Points, lunch-lady approved for a non-stop trip to crazy-ville!

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kilroy_locke — 2007-10-17T04:57:03+00:00

"No, I get to eat it... back off!"

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kilroy_locke — 2007-10-17T04:54:30+00:00

Some words are... unconventional.

Thread: Re: "H" is for.......?

dcjackso — 2007-10-05T05:44:28+00:00

Crikey, don't even TYPE it!! I'm trying to be helpful here, but even writing this post is dangerous, given the lax level of Mythos security around here...

Dan, if you don't know H, count yourself lucky and stop asking while you're still sane.

Whatever happens, this is the last warning you'll get from me. Michael's got the right idea; I'm outta here.

Thread: Re: Cthulhu Gets Boggled Down

mst3k4ever — 2007-10-02T21:48:50+00:00

Geosphere wrote:
mst3k4ever wrote:
Boogle

Haunted Boggle?

Heh.

Thread: Re: Longer Words variant

Kevin_Whitmore — 2007-09-23T05:36:49+00:00

I like it. It would be nice to have a list of Cthulhu Mythos names to print out and put in the box. (Dunwich, Innsmouth, Dagon, etc.) I bet the index to the RPG Call of Cthulhi might be a rich gazeteer to cull from...

Thread: Re: Quetsion about scoring

mlvanbie — 2007-09-01T04:24:53+00:00

Also, you would run out of cards very quickly. There is a fair bit of shuffling in this game with 6 players.

Thread: Re: Quetsion about scoring

voynix — 2007-08-31T23:05:58+00:00

I am almost positive that the cards are then placed in the discard pile. If they were left face up on the table, then there would be no reason to write the words down.

Thread: Quetsion about scoring

opey2dope — 2007-08-31T22:08:46+00:00

After scoring the word, and making the sanity check, do you leave the cards face up on the table? or do you discard them? The rules tell you to write down the words, but it does not say what to do with the cards after scoring.

Thread: Re: Cthulhu Gets Boggled Down

phaedrus — 2007-08-23T20:14:22+00:00

There are angles in non-euclidean geometry, they just don't support Euclid's parallel postulate.
I agree that the "(insert letter here) is for ..." were not done as well as I had hoped, seemed like there were better ideas for some of the letters. But I'll play pretty much anything that even hints to the mythos , no matter how loosely
In all I appreciated your thoughts on the game. It prompts me to try boggle, though I have an aversion to it, since I had it as a programming assignment a few semesters ago; wrote it, but never played it further than testing required--never make work out of something you love.

Thread: Re: Scorekeeping

mumblingmutant — 2007-08-22T14:31:41+00:00

Spire wrote:
If you don't want to have to enter each letter of the word in an individual cell, let Excel do it for you.

Say you want to enter your word in cell A1. All you have to do is create a series of formulas elsewhere in the spreadsheet that each extract one letter from the text in A1. Here's how you'd do it in row 2:

[c]A2 =UPPER(MID($A$1,1,1))
B2 =UPPER(MID($A$1,2,1))
C2 =UPPER(MID($A$1,3,1))
D2 =UPPER(MID($A$1,4,1))
E2 =UPPER(MID($A$1,5,1))
F2 =UPPER(MID($A$1,6,1))
G2 =UPPER(MID($A$1,7,1))
H2 =UPPER(MID($A$1,8,1))[/c]

... and so on until you reach the maximum number of letters allowed in a word.

Once you've done that, you can use row 3 to apply a scoring formula to each letter-containing cell in row 2. The easiest way would be to use a lookup table, as suggested by Chris Dorrell.

Edward,

I think you managed to give me what I was looking for. I did the lookup table similar to Chris's suggestion, however I wasn't grasping how to do the Excel substring lookups on a word. I think you found the missing piece I was looking for. I'm going to try this out.

I'll post my results when I get it going.

Thanks!

-B

Thread: Re: Scorekeeping

Spire — 2007-08-22T10:48:44+00:00

If you don't want to have to enter each letter of the word in an individual cell, let Excel do it for you.

Say you want to enter your word in cell A1. All you have to do is create a series of formulas elsewhere in the spreadsheet that each extract one letter from the text in A1. Here's how you'd do it in row 2:

[c]A2 =UPPER(MID($A$1,1,1))
B2 =UPPER(MID($A$1,2,1))
C2 =UPPER(MID($A$1,3,1))
D2 =UPPER(MID($A$1,4,1))
E2 =UPPER(MID($A$1,5,1))
F2 =UPPER(MID($A$1,6,1))
G2 =UPPER(MID($A$1,7,1))
H2 =UPPER(MID($A$1,8,1))[/c]

... and so on until you reach the maximum number of letters allowed in a word.

Once you've done that, you can use row 3 to apply a scoring formula to each letter-containing cell in row 2. The easiest way would be to use a lookup table, as suggested by Chris Dorrell.

Thread: Re: Scorekeeping

Chris Dorrell — 2007-08-22T10:26:01+00:00

Hi,

I haven't actually tested this for real in Excel and I don't own the game but howzabout:-

Put all the game letters (in alpha sequence) in the first column of a two column table with their scores in the second column.

Elsewhere in the workbook have an input row for entering the actual letters of your word. Below each input letter cell enter a VLOOKUP formula which looks for the letter entered in the cell above in the letter table and returns the score in column two.

Then all you need is to SUM the scores.

I think that should work.

Chris

Thread: Re: "H" is for.......?

mlvanbie — 2007-08-06T15:40:31+00:00

Unsubscribing before the third mention....

Thread: Re: Cthulhu Gets Boggled Down

Geosphere — 2007-08-06T14:46:09+00:00

mst3k4ever wrote:
Boogle

Haunted Boggle?

Thread: Re: Cthulhu Gets Boggled Down

mst3k4ever — 2007-08-06T14:35:13+00:00

AnakinOU wrote:
Did you play with any of the variant rules? I've found the "everybody gets one last turn after someone breaks 100 points" is nice, and the rule where you can spell jibberish words if you only have 1 sanity left actually adds a nice dose of Cthulhu-style flavor to the game.

The gibberish word option, as well as the Psychiatrist option (which allows you to regain sanity), are earmarked for out next session. They do add more overtly Cthulhu-esque elements.

Thread: Re: Cthulhu Gets Boggled Down

mst3k4ever — 2007-08-06T14:32:31+00:00

JockiB wrote:
mst3k4ever wrote:
And scoring based on the angles of the letters is just plain wrong! Guys, Cthulhu digs non-Euclidean geometry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Euclidean_geometry); that means no angles!

Well, there are other beings in the Mythos. Like the Hounds of Tindalos (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hounds_of_Tindalos), that materialize through angles. They are even mentioned on the back of the game.

So it's not that wrong. The more angles, the greater chance that the Hounds will appear and drive you insane or worse.

Yes, I saw that. But it's not the "Call of the Hounds" mythos; heck, they don't even rate a mention on the "H is for..." or "T is for..." cards!

I think the "horror/sanity" theme is a bit of a red herring; the real theme is "a child's Cthulhu primer."

Thread: Re: Cthulhu Gets Boggled Down

AnakinOU — 2007-08-06T14:16:08+00:00

Did you play with any of the variant rules? I've found the "everybody gets one last turn after someone breaks 100 points" is nice, and the rule where you can spell jibberish words if you only have 1 sanity left actually adds a nice dose of Cthulhu-style flavor to the game.