Do You Need A Box To Game? WORD WRAP review

 am surrounded by 13×13 sized cubes in grids of four by four or five by five. All of them contain board games, from my pride and joys (like Concordia, with the upgraded bits) to games I’ve kept for sentimental value. 

But they all share something in common: a box full of stuff. 

Some of those boxes are very clever games designed by Steve Finn of Dr. Finn’s Games. Doc has always been one of the clever designers in board gaming, with games like Biblios taking up residence on many Best Of lists over the years. 

Someone crowned Steve as the “King of the Filler Game” or some such, for his ability to come up with clever little math puzzles and turn them into enjoyable but brain-burny thirty to forty minute games. Games like the excellent Nanga Parbat come immediately to mind, a two player little battle adding cute little animal meeples to a board and trying to trigger their special powers to score points. 

But the publishing industry is tough, and there are a lot of moving parts. Always the innovator, Dr. Finn has a new project that is worth taking a look. He sent me courtesy copies of two books that he has recently published (with another coming to crowdfunding next month) for review, and I’ve been playing one of the books in particular a lot lately.

It’s called Dr. Finn’s Book of Solo Strategy and Word Games, and it’s chock full of strategy games. Remember those workbooks we got in school that were tied to the big unit book for science or social studies? That’s the kind of book this is. 

This first book comes with eight strategy and word game puzzles to play, ranging from games that are homages to his other successful games (like Cosmic Run and The Little Flower Shop, to brand new experiences. 

I’ve been playing three of the games in particular, Pen Pals, Cosmic Run: Mission One, and Word Wrap. Every one is super solid, a quick ten minute puzzle that really stretches your brain. 

The Jay Bell came over for our Twitch Tuesday stream (now on Thursday!) and after we played three two player games that I will blog about later, he spied the book and asked, “What’s that?” After I explained the concept, I could see he was interested. 

So, I checked the book, and lo and behold, Dr. Finn says you can play all of these games multiplayer except for the Cosmic Run one (where you are playing against an autobot). 

So, I tore out one of the Word Wrap sheets, gave it to Jay, and we competed to see who could get the highest score. 

Word Wrap is a quick playing word puzzle. Players have only eight turns to “capture” 32 letters from a grid of letters, and placing them into blank words on the bottom of the sheet. (It’s as if your favorite supermarket line word search had a baby with scrabble, and all of the other parents in the neighborhood gave the couple victory points instead of educational toys.)

The game is super simple to explain. Each round, one of the players rolls a six sided die, and the result points to a shape that is used to “capture” the letters. The shapes can be rotated or flipped, but they have to be adjacent to the previous play (unless impossible, then just adjacent to a previous capture). The player then takes the letters (each one a different value from the common letters like ‘S’ and ‘T’ that are worth only one point when in a completed word to ‘X’ which is worth a whopping seven points if you can use it) that are encircled, and adds them to the blank word spaces on the bottom.

If capturing the right letters using a spatial puzzle wasn’t enough, that mechanic of moving the letters down into word spaces is even more juicy. Plus, some of the words have bonuses, either for the letters or for completing the word. 

My scores haven’t been great. Good word smiths score 90-110 points in this game, and I’ve been in the high sixties. But, instead of competing with word geniuses around the world (according to the handy dandy chart in the book), it was more fun playing against Jay. Sure, this is a solo experience, and we are not really affecting each other, but it was fun to watch him build his words while I puzzled out mine. The score was close, but I nipped him with “AXE” worth sixteen points.

I haven’t played all eight yet, but I will. It’s a fun morning activity while I am eating some toast, and gives me a nice puzzly start to the day. 

Keep an eye out for the Kickstarter project coming up next month for the latest book, but you can also get the two current books on Amazon right now. If you like puzzles and have ten minutes to spare, this is a good experience.

Until next time, laissez les bon temps rouler!
— BJ from Board Game Gumbo

** Complimentary copies of the books were provided by the publisher. **