“Sexy Taxi” - crossword game
Shared by Kasha
- Why buy designer games, when some of the best competitive pastimes need only a pen and paper?
Here is a game, excellent for whiling away the time on train journeys. Usually called Crosswords or Word Squares, it is also known, among true aficionados, as Sexy Taxi, for reasons which will soon be apparent.
Played by any number of people (but two or three is best), the game begins with everyone drawing a square on a sheet of paper subdivided into smaller squares. The starting grid may be of any agreed size, from four-by-four upwards, depending on how long you want the game to last and how many long words the players know.
Play proceeds with each person in turn saying a letter, which must then be entered by each player on to an empty square on his grid. Each player knows only where he himself has placed the letter, not where the other players have put theirs. The objective is to score points by forming words, read horizontally or vertically, with longer words scoring more points.
On a four-by-four grid, a good scoring system is 6 points for a 4-letter word, 4 points for a 3-letter word, and 2 points for a 2-letter word. Each letter may be scored in only one word on each line. (So “boat” scores 6 as a 4-letter word, with nothing extra for “boa”, “oat” or “at”.)
It’s a good idea to ensure that all players end the game having contributed the same number of letters, so with two or three playing on a five-by-five grid, it is sensible to start with an agreed letter already in the middle square. Once the game has started, sneaky players will think of words containing unusual letters, such as Q, X or Z, with which to embarrass their opponents towards the end of the game. Which is why the words sexy and taxi often crop up.
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