Also worth a mention here is solo Cribbage. Especially if you already know the regular game.
For the 4x4 grid game, I like to shuffle up the deck and then play three games in a row (17 cards x 3 = 51). I had a good session the other week where I came close to winning all three games (I won the first two, and got within about 10 points of victory in the final game).
(Edit: contrary to the box art, the official title is a single word: Letterpress.)
Iāve now had a couple of games, and I think I understand why Iād lacked any firm opinion on the solo mode ā itās going to take a bunch more plays to get to grips with it enough to feel comfortable rating it! I think it could be rather good ā a solo word game involving actual strategies ā but I donāt have enough experience to say how well it really works.
Whether single- or multi-player, Letterpress has you building up a ācollectionā of cards over the course of the first four rounds (always working with 2 communal letters and a hand of 5 drafted letters to create a word, and then adding one or more cards to your collection based on how good your word is); but the actual result of the game rests entirely on the fifth round, which has you making the best word you can from the cards in your collection. With multiple players, after playing their words, each player takes 1-2 cards for their collection from any word played that round, with the player who played the best word getting both priority and an extra card; and then the winner is the player who makes the best word in the final round. The solo game is rather more complicated and harder to get a handle onā¦
In the solo game, cards go either to your collection or to the ālibraryā, the latter of which accumulates all cards which werenāt used to make a word in rounds 1-4 (so short words cause the library to become bigger, faster). Then at the end of every round you select one card to be removed from the library and either added to your collection (if your word that round was good enough), or discarded from the game (if your word didnāt reach the threshold score). Each individual card is worth a varying amount based on its letter, so when you remove a card youāre not only choosing a letter, but also choosing the remaining value of the library ā which is important because you win the game if your 5th-round word is more valuable than the library. You might just try to remove all the highest value cards from the library to minimise the target score; but OTOH the cheaper letters are likely to be easier to use. You also add cards into your collection in rounds 2,3,4 by comparing your new word with the word from the previous round, and taking letters from that previous word (based on a process that I wonāt attempt to explain here). These interactions with the library and with your own previous words feel interesting and strategic, with your choices in each round having potential flow-on effects; but Iād need to play a heap more to decide whether that feeling lasts in the longer term, or if thereās simply a single strategy which it always makes best sense to pursue.
One slightly negative point for the solo mode is that it doesnāt involve any of the āchallengeā cards that you use in the multi-player game. This is partly understandable as some of the challenges are with respect to words made by other players; but only 4 of the 18 challenges require other players, and it just seems like a shame that you donāt get to attempt these challenges in the solo game. That feels ripe for some house-ruling.
All in all I think itās interesting, and it 100% fits the time criteria for this thread. I intend to play it some more, and figure out whether I want to put it into regular rotation.
āHandSoloā must be a euphemism, surely?
Itās probably one to avoid in casual conversation, at any rate :ā)
Well Letterpress is pretty good. You can just wing it ā and always trying to make the longest words possible should give you a decent shot ā but with some more experience under my belt, itās startled me how much of a brain-burner it becomes if you really try to plan for the final round throughout the gameā¦
Looking at your current Collection, you can always try to establish what final word you might be aiming for; which letters youāll still need to get in order to make it; whether the library has any of those letters; whether your previous word has any of those letters; whether the cards you are in the process of drafting for your next word have any of those letters; and then you need to try to figure out how to proceed in order to give you the best chance of getting the letters you need from wherever they are at the time. Your collection is empty to begin with, so āanything is possibleā at the start, but youāll likely find yourself with some specific desired letters as the rounds progress.
When drafting cards, you firstly deal 5 cards and pick 1, then deal 4 and pick 1, etc, with no choice for the final card. (I deal myself five face-down piles containing 5,4,3,2,1 cards respectively, and then reveal and choose from one pile at a time.) So every turn there are a total of 15 letters for which you are pondering not only their potential use in this roundās word, but also how that letter would affect your options for a final-round word; and if you do want that letter for the final round, do you want to use it in your current word, or is it better to draft it but not use it and try to get it out of the Library in a subsequent turn? Either way there are risks of not being able to get it into your Collection at all, and higher-value cards especially might be harder to get back if you play them in a word. Thereās also the persistent question of whether to draft high-value letters in the first placeā¦ on the one hand you want to make high-value words, but on the other hand you donāt want too many high-value letters getting into the Library, so you might be trying to balance that at the same time.
Unless you have a great word in the bag early, you rarely have much certainty about anything, so youāre always adapting to the cards youāre drawing. And again, you can wing it the whole way and just see what you end up with, and Iāve won several games just doing that (luck is very much a factor in a game like this); so burning your brain to maximise your success rate is really an opt-in experience :ā)
If youāre a solo gamer and love word games and also puzzles, Iād suggest taking a look at Letterpress.
Best result to date: Final word = 20; Library = 7. (Or final word = 24 if we allow āunfriskyā which, as Iām playing solo, I definitely allowed ;ā) 20 isnāt unusually high, but 7 is very low. I was also pretty pleased on the turn when I managed to put down ābunkersā from the 2 start cards + 5 drafted cards, meaning that the Library got one card smaller that round!
