| The key to DICEWORDS is a chart called the Dice Table, which lists the letters available on each of the dice (each die is identified by its own unique colour, plus a symbol for the colourblind). For example, the Dice Table tells us that the green die contains the letters Z, E, G, M, P and T; so it would be pointless to roll the green die and hope for any other letter! Similarly, if you’re looking for an A, you will need to roll the Gold, Indigo or Orange. The Dice Table enables players to make informed choices when rerolling, and so play more strategically.
Suppose your first roll gives you these dice:  You’re very close to spelling ELEPHANT, just needing an A. A quick glance at the Dice Table tells you that the gold die contains all the vowels and so a reroll could give the missing A. But it’s also worth noting that rolling the unused blue die could produce an S with which you could spell ELEPHANTS and use all nine dice (which it turns out would score you 20 more points). You may have noticed that the selection above is only one letter away from spelling TELEPHONE, but the Dice Table informs us that no letter in TELEPHONE appears on the blue die, so it is not a spellable word in DICEWORDS. So let’s say you reroll the gold and blue dice:  You got the S but the gold die has come up with I. Do you roll it again? There is also a ‘wild-card’ face (‘?’) on the gold die which can count as any letter, so that could be your A. Incidentally, the wild-card is worth -2 which means it subtracts 2 from the word value, and therefore gives less to multiply (in fact, it is seldom worth using the wild-card just to extend an existing word; it often reduces the score). You only have one roll left. But can you spell anything else now? PLINTHS is available, scoring 70. So perhaps you might now keep PLINTHS and reroll the two Es, hoping to improve on 70... |
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