Letter Soup

  • A paper-pencil game for two or more players, where players try to make a meaningful ‘soup’ with ingredients available.
  • Each player calls out a letter and everyone writes the letters on their paper. When a total of six letters is obtained, each player tries to find words containing as many chosen letters as possible, with as few extra letters as possible.
  • A word containing more chosen letters beats a word with less chosen letters. If two words have the same number of chosen letters, then the one with less additional letters prevails. If a chosen letter appears more than once in a word, only one of them is considered using a chosen letter and the others count as extra letters. Thus, the best possible word is one consisting only of chosen letters. A player who can find such a word automatically wins the round.
  • After a bit of struggling with the letter ingredients, any player who thinks to have found a pretty strong word calls out his/her word. After calling out the word a player keeps silent till the end of the round.
  • If any other players can come up with a ‘better’ word, (a word with more chosen letters or a word with same number of chosen letters but with fewer additional letters) they also call their word and start waiting.
  • At the end of a predetermined time (say a total of 5 mins, or 1 min after the first word is declared) the last player who called out his/her word, hence the best of the declared words, is the winner of the round.
  • New letters are chosen to start a new round. 

 

EXAMPLE

(Three players P1, P2, P3 with chosen letters G, R, P, O, Y, I)
 
P1: Thinks of COPY. But considers it not strong enough and keeps thinking. Then finds a better word and calls it out, being convinced that this has a pretty good chance to win: CRYPTIC
P2: After a while, comes up with a word with same number of chosen letters (4) but with fewer additional letters: PIGGY. Although this word puts P2 in a strong position in the round, it is not over yet.
P3: Now it is the last minute and unless P3 can think of a stronger word, P2 will win the round. But wait, P3 does find a better word and actually wins: PRODIGY!
 
COPY >> 3 + 1
CRYPTIC >> 4 + 3
PIGGY >> 4 + 1
PRODIGY >> 6 + 1