Word Sleuths - A tabletop word game of deduction and elimination

In WORD SLEUTHS, two to six players attempt to guess each other's increasingly longer secret words and accumulate the most points to win.
In this engaging and very vocal game, players have fun communicating and deciphering letters into words.
Consider it a multiplayer game of "Hangman".

Components:
• 26 A-Z letter tiles
• six coins with point values
• word deduction worksheets.


Setup: Shuffle the A-Z tiles and place face down in a pile. Give each player a pad and pen/pencil as well as their player number. Decide upon an end of game score, for example 500 points. The game is played in four rounds, starting with three-letter words and progressing along to six-letter words.
Game Round Prep: Before each round starts, all players write down a secret word, one in which no letters repeat (eg GOLD is OK but GONG is invalid). Rounds start with three letter words, progressing to four, five and six letters. Always stack six coins face up in decreasing values ordered 50 (top), 40, 30, … 5 (last).

Game Play: Any player flips over a single letter tile, and all players whose word has that letter call out that they have that letter. Players now write down the letter within their pad in the appropriate spot (player by word length).

Guessing Words: As long as a letter has resulted in a match, each player has one chance to guess the word of any player. If correct, the player grabs the top coin.

Strategy: Start unscrambling the letters for each player. Look at what letters have been flipped to eliminate letters not in words before making your guess.

Scoring: After four rounds, score each player’s coin values and return all the coins.
Winning: Play until a player exceeds the target score.

Exceptions: If a player does not identify a letter in their word, or their word contains duplicate letters, any coins collected must be returned.