Letter Jam

To set up, shuffle all 64 letter cards and deal them evenly among players. Each player secretly selects 5 cards from their dealt hand to form a secret word, then shuffles these 5 cards and passes them face down to the player on their left. Each player places these received cards into 5 stands, facing away from themselves so only other players can see their letters. Any remaining cards from the initial deal are discarded. The setup card for the corresponding player count is placed in the center of the table, and clue tokens (red and green) are placed on the designated spots on this card. Each player receives a notepad and a pencil to record their guesses. Players can also adjust the difficulty by choosing to play with fewer (3 or 4) or more (6 or 7) letters per player.

The main objective of Letter Jam is a cooperative one: for all players to successfully guess the letters in their own secret word and then collectively form a valid word using those guessed letters. Players must achieve this before they either run out of available clue tokens or all players agree that they have enough information to make their final guesses. Success is determined by whether every player can correctly spell a real word using the letters they have identified as their own.

Each round begins with a discussion among all players to decide who will be the clue-giver. The clue-giver's role is to identify a word using letters visible to them (which includes other players' hidden letters and any bonus letters), but not their own hidden letters. The clue-giver announces the length of their chosen clue word, how many players it helps, and if it uses wild cards or bonus letters, but not which specific letters or players. After a clue-giver is chosen, they take a clue token (red for the first clue of a round, green for subsequent clues). The clue-giver then spells out their chosen word by pointing to the letters in other players' stands (or bonus/wild cards) in sequence, using numbered tokens to mark the position of each letter in their clue word. Players record the clue and their guesses on their notepads. If a player successfully guesses one of their own hidden letters, they can flip that card face down and draw a new one from the draw pile, placing it face down in their stand. If a wild card is used in a clue, it can represent any single letter, but if it appears multiple times in a clue, it must represent the same letter each time.

Scoring is an optional element in Letter Jam, used to track performance across games. If players choose to score, after successfully completing the game, each player calculates points for their correctly guessed word. The base score is three times the length of their word. Additionally, players earn one point for each letter beyond the initial length that was formed using a bonus card or wild card. Finally, one point is awarded for each green clue token remaining on the setup card at the end of the game. Players can then compare their total scores to previous attempts to see improvement.

The game can end in two ways. The first is if the team runs out of clue tokens; specifically, if at the end of a round, there are no red clue tokens available for the next round, the game ends immediately. The second way the game ends is if all players collectively decide that they have successfully identified all of their hidden letters and no longer need any more clues. Once the game ends, each player attempts to spell out a valid word using the letters they have recorded on their notepad as their own. If every player successfully spells a valid word, the team wins. If even one player fails to spell a valid word, the entire team loses.