Most people think of Scrabble when they think of word games, but I prefer games like Boggle where everyone plays at the same time. Scrosswords is just such a game, stylishly executed and artfully presented.
The heart of the game is a velvet bag filled with wooden tiles marked with gold letters and point values. Most of the tiles are black, but some are green or blue and are worth bonus points to the wordsmith. That's the game's term for the current player, who rolls 4 dice and pulls the resulting number of tiles from the bag. He has 60 seconds to link the tiles into a crossword. while the other players "scavenge." Pencils in hand, they try to anagram the wordsmith's letters into as many different words of five or more letters as possible before the wordsmith stops.
The wordsmith scores a tile's value for each word in which it is used in his crossword. Words including colored tiles have their values doubled or tripled. Dense crossword constructions are generally more rewarding then sparse ones, and the placement of the colored tiles can really make a difference.
The scavengers score 10 points for each word unique to their lists, with duplicates scoring nothing (as in Boggle). The values and colors of the tiles are meaningless to scavengers.
Play continues until everyone's had a chance to be the wordsmith an agreed-upon number of times, or until someone reaches a certain total.
I'm not sure which side of the battle I prefer. The wordsmith's job is the more creative one, offering opportunity for clever offensive and defensive play. The wordsmith doesn't have to use every tile— he can stop the timer at any time, with the unused tiles counting against his score. The faster he finishes, the less time the scavengers have to find words.
The scavengers have a more pure game to play, concerning themselves solely with anagramming letters into words. It can be difficult to see the tiles while the wordsmith works, so prudent scavengers quickly take to jotting down all the letters immediately. Depending on the mix of letters, scavengers have the chance to score big points.
Scrosswords throws in another wrinkle in the form of a category for each round. The wordsmith gets a ten point bonus for each word in his grid which fits that category, and scavengers can ignore the five-letter minimum for such words. This can offer a nice windfall, but often you'll find yourself too busy rearranging letters to give much thought to the category.
The wooden tiles are pleasing to the touch and eye, and the whole production has the look of class. Perhaps a little too classy— the stylish box lid has only an inch of lip, making it a very loose fit. Priceless has a similar box design. It may look nice, but I want something I can store on a shelf without worrying about it slipping open. I hope this isn't the beginning of a trend.
Scrosswords throws word games like Boggle, Perquackey, and Pick Two into a pot, stirs them all up, and cooks up a satisfying gumbo (which is more than I can say for that metaphor). The concepts and mechanisms here are nothing new, but they combine to form a very satisfying whole. And, in a market saturated by word quizzes masquerading as the next Scrabble, a recommended buy for any word game junky looking for a fix.