This is one of those games that the audience with which it is being played makes or breaks the enjoyability of playing the game. To date I have only played Phlounder three or four times, not because it is a bad game, but because the people with whom I played it did not enjoy it.

Phlounder is one of those innovative 3M games of the '60s. The players place letter tiles, face down, in a board/tray with four serpentine tracks. One player rolls a pair of dice which sets the requirement for a scoring word: one die designates the word to be a verb, noun, or either; the other sets a length of four to seven letters (one face allows the word to be any length over four letters). Players then draw and discard tiles, willy-nilly, from the board/tray until one player has an acceptable word and discards all of his or her leftover tiles, at which time they ring the bell (similar to the one in Pit). That player scores two points plus one per letter in the word. All other players score one point per letter in any acceptable words made less one point for leftover letter. Top score after ten rounds wins.

I played two games of this against my wife and it was not a pleasant experience. I played very well and kept the bell ringing. I know losing is not a fun thing for anyone, but she did not appreciate losing by over 70 points, so the game was shelved. A later attempt to play it as a team game was more successful, but still an overall unpleasantness existed.

I think it's on Dennis Matheson's 3M games website that he remarks that Phlounder, unlike most 3M games, has a dexterity element that is pretty tension- and temper-inflammatory, as lots of quick action takes place in a small space (the Phlounder board is not much larger than a large mouse pad). I can see how this game could be nasty with very competitive players, and how weaker players could be destroyed.

All of this is very sad to me, because I really enjoy the game. My set has wooden tiles with a nice font, and the drawing and discarding of tiles has a very nice shuttling motion to it, so the tactile element was very nice. And I liked the challenge of forming the words. I think this is one of the greatest unplayed games in my collection.