Word Nim

In ancient times, in 2018, Kiitos came from an attempt to make a general purpose letter card deck. The other games I thought up didn’t work as well as I thought they would, and Kiitos worked way better than I anticipated. (We played it as a 3 player first and thought that was better than expected, and then I said “It won’t work so well at two”, and then was blown away by how well it worked straight from the get go with two.)

The multipurpose deck had 72 cards and was chosen as a multiple of 18. I’ve kept a deck of 72 letters for Kiitos as I think it makes for a nice length of each round.

18 was also the number of letters in each round in the Nim like game, called O’Henry, in Sid Sackson’s book Beyond Words. In that book there are detachable sheets with an 18x15 grid of seemingly randomised letters, but are distributed so there is always going to be at least a few vowels in each 18 letter block. In each round you draw a shape around 18 letters and then each person makes a word in turn from the 18 letters, and the last person to make a word scores a point for each letter of the last word made. Then whoever made the last word makes a new 18 letter section and the next player makes the new first word.

Nim games are mathematical games where players take turns removing a number of sticks from a pile of sticks until there are none left. The winner is either the player who took the last stick, or they’re the loser, depending on the rules of the game. (Also see standupmaths describe Dr Nim on Youtube)

Word Nim can be played with a Kiitos deck. The deck can be played over 4 rounds, and for a full game go through the deck three times. Shuffle the deck. Layout 18 face up cards. If there are fewer than 3 vowels then the round is void, discard the cards and lay out the next 18 cards One person plays their turn by taking the letters that make up a word. If the next player also makes a word then discard the letters you took. If the next person can’t make a word then keep the cards of the last word you made. At the end of each 4 rounds, or once through the deck, count the number of cards you kept and that is your score for those 4 rounds.