Do you want a game to work on both spelling and math? Did you enjoy playing the game of Spoons as a child as much as I did? Then Quiddler is the perfect game for you!
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Quiddler is composed of a large deck of cards. On each card is a letter (very rarely two letters). How many points each card is worth is indicated in the corner of each card. The goal is to get the most points over eight rounds. This game can be played with 1-8 players.
How to play Quiddler
The first hand is three cards, and each subsequent round adds a card. After dealing out hands, the deck is placed in the middle with the top card flipped over to form the discard pile. They draw a card from either pile and look at it. They can either keep that card and discard a different card from their hand, or discard this new card. Either way, they discard it face up in the discard pile and it is the next player’s turn to do the same thing.
When you can make one or more words from all the cards in your hand (not including the card you need to discard at the end of your turn), put them down face up and discard your last card. All words must have at least two cards, so multiple words won’t be able to be made for the first round. Once a player plays their word(s), every other player has 1 turn to play their best word(s). Any cards not used in their words subtract points from their total score, so you want to use all your cards, if possible.
If this were a later hand and other cards were not used, they would subtract from the score.
Scoring
Once the round is over, all players tally up their points. Cards used in words add points, and cards not used subtract points. Sometimes, at the end of a round, you just need to use that last turn to get rid of a high-point card that you can’t use to minimize the points lost.
You can create more than one word in a round, you just lay them all down at once.
3+2+4+2+3=14 points
I will admit that Quiddler is a bit beyond my kids yet. I should probably teach them to play Spoons first, and we definitely need to work on spelling. Luckily, we have tons more spelling games that we can play cooperatively to practice! However, if your kids are older or just better spellers than mine, Quiddler is a fantastic way to get both spelling and arithmetic practice all at once.