- Lexicant
Lexicant is a paper and pencil
word game for two players. A letter is written on a sheet of paper, and each player takes turns adding a letter either to the beginning or the end of this ever-growingword stem . The first player to create aword loses.Lexicant is popular because of its inherent
simplicity . It requires no preparation and nothing more than paper and pencil. It can even be played orally.Bluffing and challenging
At any turn a player is expected to have one or more "reserve words" in mind which could be formed from the exact word-stem in play. If the letters in play were "MICAB", for example,
valid reserve words would include "AMICABLE", "AMICABILITY" and "SEMICABALISTIC". However, a player can opt to bluff on their turn - that is, they can add a letter to the word-stem without actually having a reserve word in mind. Bluffing is almost always done as a last resort, though some players may use bluffsstrategically to force their opponents into untenable positions. If a player feels their opponent has played a bluff and has no reserve word in mind, they may lodge a challenge at any time before the next turn is played. The recipient of the challenge must then provide a valid reserve word which contains the word-stem in play. If they are able to do so, the challenged player wins the game. If they can not provide a reserve word, the challenger wins the game.trategy
Lexicant requires a strong
vocabulary , but that alone is not generally enough to truly master the game. Familiarity with commonly-usedsuffixes ,prefixes , andPluralization is a must, as these can be used to extend word-stems into larger and larger formations before a word must finally be created. But simply extending the length of a word won't guarantee a win. A player must also employ simple strategies to ensure that the final word contains the proper number of letters required for them to win: an even number if they made the first move, or an odd number if they played the second move.Example games
Two example games could be played as follows:
ee also
*
Ghost (game) External links
* [http://www.lexicant.org Lexicant.org] - Online single-player version
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