2019-05-01_Games_World_of_Puzzles

38 GAMES WORLD^ OF PUZZLES^ | may 2019

•YOUR WORD AGAINST MINE•

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fter 40 years of tournament Scrabble play, winning

three National Championships and co-authoring the

book on the game, Everything Scrabble, I never thought

I’d encounter an equal or better word game. Sure, there are

dozens of good word games available, but none held a fasci-

nation for me like Scrabble. Until now.

Libretto, the free downloadable electronic game created by

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It is easy to learn, but the strategy is complex enough to take

a lifetime to master. I would go so far as to say it will be a ter-

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board and tiles that can travel. Currently, the game is available

for iOS and Android devices. Look for it in the app stores or

at http://www.libretto.com.

The app contains an interactive tutorial that will teach you

Libretto in just a few minutes. Here are the rules:

In this two-person game, each player draws from their own

virtual tile pouch of 100 tiles, with a letter distribution similar,

but not identical, to Scrabble. For example, Libretto has one

fewer vowel and there are six S tiles instead of four. Each tile

set includes two wildcards, designated with a star, which you

may use to represent any letter. When playing Libretto using

the free app, your tiles are always yellow and your opponent’s

tiles are always blue.

Each player forms words using their tiles only. Your op-

ponent’s tiles are rotated 90° from yours, which helps make

it clear that words are always formed from tiles of a single

color, never a mix of yellow and blue. Here is a Libretto board

as it might appear after 11 plays:

You hold eight tiles on your rack, not the conventional

seven. In most game situations it is more important to play

to the best board location rather than to find the best

word. This suggests that those who choose good loca-

tions (good strategists) can often overcome a deficiency

in vocabulary. If your tiles are awful then you may swap

any number of them, but it will cost you a turn.

Your goal is to form a connected path of tiles that runs be-

tween the east and west sides of the 16×16 board, while your

opponent is trying to form a path from north to south. That

idea is similar to Bridg-It and Hex, but there are three special

rules that enable this concept to work for words:

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letter word, beginning and ending within the center

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Thereafter, each player may play a word to virtually any

board location using any of the tiles on their rack.

Instead of forming a word on the board, you can in-

WXIEHƈƽMTƉexactly one of your tiles onto its back, which

is blank, and place it on the board—a great way to get

rid of a Q! This “blank” tile does not represent a letter but

instead acts as a connector between your tiles. In the

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and SMILE connects them, giving yellow a path of words

that runs from ABLE to the right side of the board.

None of the tiles you place may touch only one corner

of a tile of yours already on the board, unless there’s a

third tile of yours adjacent to both. These diagrams show

two forbidden tile placements and two allowable ones:

Thus, in the board we saw earlier, a play of ED to turn CLICK

into CLICKED would not be allowed because of the positions

of the D and A tiles, but a play of ING to form CLICKING and

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This “corner rule” is what makes Libretto work, and beautifully

so. It took me a little while to get it. Until then I was bemoan-

ing not being able to play anywhere on the board. But once

I understood the rule thoroughly, I began using it to my ad-

vantage, knowing that my opponent could not play to certain

squares! According to creator Wilk, the primary reason for the

corner rule is to avoid games ending in draws. I was pleasantly

surprised to discover that draws happen about as often as in

Scrabble, which is less than half of one percent of the time.

The Libretto app contains many useful features that make

gameplay enjoyable. There is a list of all acceptable two-letter

words. The game provides a basic Elo player rating system

based on wins and losses. There is a list of the top 30 rated

players, and you may challenge any player to a game, played

at your leisure. There is a game recording feature that tracks

each play, so you can review past games by yourself or with

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P

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Tiles can’t touch

corners without

a third tile present.

The restriction

applies equally

to flipped tiles.

A third tile adjacent

to both makes the

configuration OK.

The restriction does

not apply to tiles

of differing colors.