Double Quick
Double Quick! Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Setup
Place the electronic Pacesetter in the center of the table, within easy reach of all players. (Make sure it has 2 working AA batteries inside of it.) Shuffle the 88 letter tiles face down and let each player draw 22 of them. When playing with two or three players the unused letter tiles are left out of play. Keep the letter tiles you draw face down. Allow enough room between your draw pile and yourself to build your crossword.
Play
First turn
To start the game press the green button. You'll hear the starting sound and a "whistle" sound. Turn over six of your letter tiles. Immediately try to use up to five of them to build a word (or words) in crossword fashion. The first player to use five letter tiles hits the big red button on the electronic Pacesetter. You'll hear the end-of-turn "bong" sound. The next turn now begins.
Note: If enough time passes without anyone hitting the big red button, the electronic Pacesetter will make the bong sound on its own.
Second Turn
1. Get New tiles
As soon as the bong sound is heard you must do the following:
- Pass one unused (face-up) letter tile to the player on your right. You must always have at least one unused letter tile to pass along. This is important!
- Take the letter tile passed to you by the player on your left and draw two more tiles from your draw pile, turning them face-up.
IMPORTANT: Make sure you pass 1 letter tile to the right and draw 2 letter tiles from your draw pile at the start of each round. You must do so no matter what the state of your crossword.
2. Add to Your Crossword
You will now have a total of eight letter tiles face up in front of you. Of these, try to use seven of them in your crossword, leaving one to pass to the right at the end of this turn. Feel free to rearrange your crossword as often as you like. In fact, you can change it as much as you like until the final buzzer sounds.
3. Hit the Red Button
You can hit the Red button whenever all of your letter tiles (except one!) are placed in your crossword.
Turns Three through Nine
Play continues, as above, for eight turns. By the end of the eighth turn, you'll draw your last two tiles and start the ninth and last turn. Your goal is to use all 22 of your letter tiles before time expires. (You will not pass a letter tile to the right at the end of this turn.) During this turn, the electronic Pacesetter will periodically beep to remind you that the game is rapidly coming to an end.
Ending the Game
The game ends as soon as one player hits the red button (because this player is the first to use all of his or her 22 letter tiles in a crossword) or the game ending buzzer sounds because time has expired. When the buzzer sounds, all players must immediately stop work on their crosswords. In the event a player realizes s/he forgot to draw letter tiles on an earlier turn, it is too late to draw them now.
[Transcriber note: the printed page has a gap here. The sentence that follows in the source reads "They remain out of play." with no antecedent; the rules text that would identify which tiles remain out of play is not present in the source HTML.]
They remain out of play.
[Transcriber note: the source marks a footnote with an asterisk, " This letter tile is "Wild."" The asterisk has no matching marker in the text; the tile itself is presumably shown in the printed artwork and is not in the HTML.]*
- This letter tile is "Wild." It can be used to represent any letter, but if used in both a vertical and horizontal word, it must be used as the same letter in each word.
Scoring
You score for all letter tiles in your crossword. Your unused tiles (if any) do not count in your scoring.
- The player who hit the red button to end the game is awarded a bonus of 20 points.
- Any other player who has built a crossword with all 22 of his or her letter tiles is awarded a bonus of 10 points.
- Each player scores the value of the letters in his or her crossword:
Black letter tiles score 1 point each
Green letter tiles score 5 points each
Red letter tiles score 10 points each
"Wild" tiles score 10 points each
Letters which are part of two words count double
(such as the letters J and P in this example).
[Transcriber note: the example referred to ("such as the letters J and P in this example") is a diagram that is not present in the source HTML.]
Winning
The player with the highest score wins. For a longer session, play three games before deciding the winner. Keep a running tally of the points earned in each game. The highest accumulated score wins.
Disputes
The yellow button on the Pacesetter is used to register a challenge. You should hit the yellow button (you'll hear a "skidding" sound) if you observe an opponent hit the red button when his or her crossword is incomplete—either by including incorrect words or by not including the necessary amount of letter tiles. The game is now paused and all players must temporarily stop work on their crosswords. A player found "guilty" suffers a penalty of minus 10 points. But if the player issuing the challenge did so unjustly, that player suffers the 10 point penalty. Disputes are settled with reference to a dictionary, which should be available and agreed to prior to the start of play. Foreign words, proper nouns and abbreviations are not acceptable, nor are misspellings. To resume play, simply hit the yellow button again.