Combo cards

Combo Cards - the Only Combined Playing and Word-building Cards. [From a 1934 Australian newspaper advert.]

The Combo deck is a traditional card deck with a letter in its center and below the suit symbol in the corners. Back in 1934, it might well have been the only such deck available.

The deck comes with rules for 3 games:

Lexical: A rummy game. Each player starts with 10 cards, and during their turn may either: discard a card to draw the top card of the draw or discard pile; lay a word down on the table form their hand; exchange a letter from the hand for one on the table (as long as it makes a valid word; or add one or more cards from the hand to an existing word to make a new word.

When one player empties their hand, each other player adds the points of the cards in their hand to their score. Face cards are 10 points, number cards have points equal to the number of spots, and the Joker (wild card) is 15 points. When someone reaches 100+ points the player with the lowest score wins.

Kittylex: The same as Lexical, except it scores by each player placing a chip in the kitty at the start of the round, and the winner claiming the kitty.

Combolex: The same as Lexical, except you may also lay down a flush or run of 5+ cards. You may not lay off cards on opponents' flushes or runs.