Say Rummy

Objective: The first player who gets rid of all of their cards by creating words or adding to already created words wins.

For two or more players.

  1. Shuffle the cards (including the wild cards).

  2. Deal seven cards to each player face down, beginning with the player to the left of the dealer.

  3. The remaining cards are laid face-down in a stock pile at the center of the table. The dealer takes the top card and places it beside the stock pile face up in a discard pile.

  4. Play occurs in a clockwise fashion. The first player to play can choose either the card on the discard pile or the top card on the stock pile. If the first player can create a word (of any length) from their cards, they can lay these cards down on the table and then discard one card face up onto the discard pile. If they cannot create a word or choose not to lay down a word, they simply discard one card from their hand. Either way, play then moves on to the next player.

  5. The next player can either choose the face-up card at the top of the discard pile or the top face-down card from the stock pile. They can then either lay down a word or lay down a card or cards to a previously played word or words. For example, if the word “dog” /dɔg/ has been previously played, a player could lay down an /i/ card to create the word “doggy.”

  6. Play continues in this fashion. If the stock pile runs out before a player wins, the dealer should shuffle the discard pile and set it back on the table.

  7. Whichever player runs out of cards first wins. If no one wins after the stock pile has been exhausted twice, the player with the fewest number of cards in their hand wins.

Notes:

  • If a player picks up the top discard, the player cannot put that card back on the discard pile in that round.

  • Scoring: players can use a scoring system if multiple games will be played and should decide on their preferred scoring system in advance. For example, (1) each card held by a player at the end of a game might count as one point, (2) each card might have a value equal to the number of graphemes on the card, or (3) vowel cards might count as one point and consonant cards might count as two.

  • As words can be pronounced differently depending on accent and dialect, there can be more than one way to transcribe a word phonetically. Thus, players should agree in advance on how to resolve questions about acceptable respellings. For example, they might chose to consult Dictionary.com or another dictionary of their choice for standard phonetic transcriptions of words.

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