PDF VERSION

A PDF version of the Loony Lingo rules can be downloaded here. For easy reference, I recommend printing these out.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO LEARN LOONY LINGO?

If you have played any traditional word-building game, you will already know most of Loony Lingo’s rules, and its fresh twists will feel like second nature in no time!

SECTION 1. GAME MATERIALS

• A mobile phone for each player (if you want to play with theme cards).

• A physical word-building game set.

• If your game set includes an “official board”, you are playing in “official mode”.

• The grid on the board in “official mode” is considered “even” if both the number of rows and columns are even numbers, such as an 8 x 8 grid.

• The grid on the board in “official mode” is considered “odd” if both the number of rows and columns are odd numbers, such as a 15 x 15 grid.

• If your game set does not include a board at all, you can easily improvise. For example, use a board from another game, a large chopping board, a large book, or anything similar. As long as you can easily rotate your “improv board”, you can play Loony Lingo! Playing with an “improv board” is termed playing in “improv mode”.

SECTION 2. SETTING UP A GAME

• On their mobile phone, each player goes to the rules page of the Loony Lingo website and presses the “Generate Theme” button at the top of that page to generate their first “theme card”.

• To decide who goes first, each player draws a tile from the letter tile bag that comes with the game set being used. The player with the letter closest to Z goes first. If there is a tie, draw additional tiles until a winner emerges. Put the drawn tiles back in the tile bag.

• Finally, each player randomly draws 7 letter tiles from the tile bag and:

SECTION 3. THE AIM OF THE GAME

The goal is to create high-scoring “plays”, by forming words on the game board, using letter tiles. To do this, you combine tiles to create words vertically or horizontally; diagonal formations are not allowed.

Plays can be:

• Regular words.

• Proper nouns (names of individuals, places, or organisations that start with a capital letter).

• Slang and colloquial language.

• Invented words that “ring true”, like GINFINITY (a never-ending supply of gin), or CHAPPLE (a chapel made of apples).

• Descriptions, e.g., FAST CHEETAH.

• Phrases, e.g., HELLO THERE.

• Sentences, including truncations, e.g., DOG BARK LOUD.

Phrases and sentences can be built over multiple turns.

You can use phonetic spellings (like DRAGIN for DRAGON).

You can use accents (like EPPLE for APPLE in a South African accent, FUSH for FISH in a New Zealand accent).

You can use words from any language; however, you can choose to limit the number of permitted languages, if you feel that multi-language speakers may gain an unfair advantage.

Almost any play flies, provided you convince at least ONE other player that it “rings true”.

You can use the same word more than once throughout the game.

You can create the same word from an existing, truncated word. For example, it is legal to change GROS to GROSS.

SECTION 4. EVEN LOONY LINGO HAS ITS LIMITS!

• Do not exclude vowels, e.g., CAULDRON cannot be spelled as CLDRN.

• Do not use acronyms.

• Do not start plays with A, AN, or I (too easy!).

• Do not start plays with THE, or phonetic versions like DA or THA (also too easy!).

• Do not use redundant letters, e.g., COOL cannot be spelled as COOOOOL.

• Do not use a single letter for a whole word, e.g., spelling YOU as U.

• Do not use Roman numerals.

• Unless you are playing in “official mode”, where traditional rules explicitly allow tile stacking, do not place one tile on top of another tile already placed on the board.

Uthawyze, bi az krazee az yoo lyke! 

And remember, no one wants to play with nit pickers!

SECTION 5. WILDCARD TILES

In each turn, when adding tiles to the board, you are allowed to place ONE tile on the board upside down, meaning the blank side of the tile faces upwards, rather than the letter side.

“Flipping” a tile in this manner turns it into a “wildcard tile”.

A wildcard tile can represent any letter. It is “dynamic”.

* Note: For clarity, all the following play examples contain “true” spellings. Naturally, wacky spellings can be made in any play.

For instance, in the diagram below (where the * represents a wildcard tile) …

*	A	T	E
A
G
E

… the horizontal play could be seen as, e.g., DATE, GATE, or LATE, while the vertical play could be seen as, e.g., SAGE, WAGE, or PAGE.

Just to be clear, wildcard tiles are “constantly dynamic”, i.e., the letter they represent can vary across multiple turns.

For example, in the diagram below …

Q

U

I

*

… the play could be seen as, e.g., QUIZ, QUIP or QUIT.

In another turn, a player might, for instance, place a T after the wildcard, changing the wildcard tile into an E, forming the word QUIET:

Q

U

I

*

T

* Note: You CANNOT use a WILDCARD TILE if it is simply creating a “S-A-T-E plural”, i.e., an “S-at-the-end plural”, e.g., SHIRTS, PANTS, SHOES, etc.

You can, however, create a “S-A-T-E plural” if you use a letter tile that is actually printed with an S or Z, e.g., to create SOCKS or SOCKZ.

* Note: If you draw a “blank” tile, i.e., a tile with no letter printed on it, follow the same rules that apply to a “flipped” wildcard tile.

SECTION 6. TAKING THE FIRST TURN

The way the first turn is taken depends on the type of board you are playing with. To start the game in:

• “Official mode”, on an “odd” board: The first player combines two or more tiles on the board, ensuring that one of these tiles lands either in a corner square, or the central square.

• “Official mode”, on an “even” board: The first player combines two or more tiles on the board, ensuring that one of these tiles lands in a corner square.

• “Improv mode”: The first player combines two or more tiles on the improvised board, placing them in the approximate centre of the board.

After completing your turn, draw the same number of tiles from the letter tile bag as you added to the board.

SECTION 7. TAKING SUBSEQUENT TURNS

Again, the way subsequent turns are taken depends on the type of board you are playing with. To take a subsequent turn in:

• “Official mode”, on an “odd” board – you have three potential options:

• “Official mode”, on an “even” board – you have two potential options:

• “Improv mode”:

You cannot form new plays in different parts of the board in one turn; the tiles you add must be in a single continuous line.

Alternatively, you can choose to pass your turn, or exchange tiles from the letter tile bag.

SECTION 8. WAYS TO MAKE PLAYS

After the initial play, there are three ways to make subsequent plays:

1. Add one or more tiles, to either the beginning or end of an existing play, or to both the beginning and end of an existing play. Here are two examples:

Example A. OAR morphs into BOARD:

O

A

R

B

O

A

R

D

Example B. M and B connect to the O in HOW, forming MOB:

	H
	O
	W

	H
M	O	B
	W

2. Add one or more tiles, parallel to an existing play. When the adjacent tiles also form legal plays, it is allowed. For instance, placing MOTOR horizontally beneath SAD creates the vertical plays SO, AT and DO:

	S	A	D

	S	A	D
M	O	T	O	R

3. Connect parallel plays. In the example below, placing an O and a P, between the existing H and E on the board, forms HOPE:

H			E
U			V
G			E

H	O	P	E
U			V
G			E

SECTION 9. KEEPING SCORE

Firstly, disregard any numerical point values that may be on your letter tiles, as well as any bonus squares that may be on your board; these are irrelevant in the Loony Lingo scoring system.

Instead, your score in each turn is determined by combining your “tile score” and “theme score”.

a) Tile Score

In Loony Lingo, you simply earn 1 point for every tile you add to the board during a turn. 

For instance, if the play were TROUBLE, the tile score would be 7.

If, in a subsequent turn, a player simply added a D, to create TROUBLED, their tile score would be 1, as they only added one tile to the board.

The same rule applies even when multiple plays are made in a single turn. For instance, in the example below, adding an F to the board results in two plays: FEEL and FOWL…

	E	E	L
O
W
L

F	E	E	L
O
W
L

…however, adding the F tile to the board still only contributes 1 point to the tile score.

b) Theme Score

You get 3 bonus points for each “theme play” you make in a turn.

Making a theme play means making a play that relates to your theme card.

If your theme card is “Ego”, for example, playing the word BOAST would count as a theme play. 

An opportunity for a “multi-theme play” is shown below. If your bonus card were “Fear”, you could create two theme plays in one turn. By placing a G on the board, you could form the words GHOST and GRIM:

	H	O	S	T
R
I
M

G	H	O	S	T
R
I
M

The turn above would result in 7 points overall, broken down into:

• 1 tile point for adding the G to the board.

• 3 bonus points for making the GHOST theme play.

• 3 bonus points for making the GRIM theme play.

* Note: It is NOT compulsory for every play you make to be a theme play.

The recipe for a perfect turn is:

• Add many tiles to the board.

• Create multiple plays that relate to your bonus theme.

SECTION 10. THEME CARDS – THE FULL STORY!

• You must generate a new theme card on your mobile phone after every turn, even if you did not make a theme play.

• If you are a novice player, please feel free to change your theme card if the generated theme bamboozles you. However, be sure to challenge yourself – you will be amazed by how quickly you become a theme play master!

• If you are playing with Loony Lingo novices, please feel free to lower the bonus points for theme plays to 1 or 2 points, to make the game fairer for inexperienced players.

SECTION 11. END OF THE GAME

The game concludes when either:

• ALL the tiles have been drawn, and one player has NO tiles left to play.

• All possible plays have been made.

• Every player, in succession, passes their turn twice in a row.

When the game ends, each player reduces their total score by the number of unplayed tiles they have left.

The player with the highest final score at the end of this deduction wins the game.

Wot ah yoo wayting phor? 

It’s tyme tu plae Lewni Lyngo!