Word Game

WHATZIT?™ are cunningly disguised names, phrases and sayings that are turned around, upside-down, sideways or jumbled up.

You need to work out the hidden word or phrase on each card. It could be the size, position or direction that will give you a clue. Sometimes, the pictures combined with a word or a number will give you your answer

1987 - BOARD GAME:

In 'Whatzit?' the object is to solve rebus-like puzzles. (PLAY PLAY might be "double play") The roll of a die determines if you play solo, against everyone, or challenge a specific opponent. The winner moves the roll of a d6. Special spaces allow you to take a shortcut by solving a tougher "Wicked Whatzit". First to the top of the board wins.

The Rose Art edition of the game has new puzzles. The puzzles are divided into three categories of difficulty. The more difficult the puzzle, the more points it is worth. Four puzzles from each category are placed randomly in a the three by four frame. Players must solve puzzles which are orthogonally to the previously solved puzzle. The first player to reach an agreed to number of points is the winner.

HISTORY:

Known as WHATZIT?™ in the USA and Canada, KATCH-ITS™ in Australia/NZ and DINGBATS® in the UK and rest of world, are syndicated internationally, in newspapers, best-selling books and TV shows. The family board game was voted ‘Game of the Year’ in the UK and ‘Toy of the Year’ in the USA. Since then, over 2 million DINGBATS and WHATZIT board games, travel games and best-selling books have been created.

2009/2010 - iPHONE & iPOD TOUCH VERSION OF BOARD GAME:

Celebrating the 30th Anniversary of 'WHATZIT?' (since the first 'WHATZIT?' were published in Newspapers in 1980), Paul Sellers, the inventor of 'WHATZIT?' has created a new version of the game for iPhone and iPod Touch.

You can play against the clock and see if you can achieve the fastest time in the world. This highly-addictive assortment contains 15 levels of 'Sellers' favourite 180 mind-boggling puzzles for the first release and will be adding more card packs in future releases.

'WHATZIT?' is available for download on the iTunes App Store now, and you can see the new website http://www.whatzit.com, which also has a link to the 'WHATZIT?' Boardgame for iPhone.

A trivia/puzzle game akin to MindTrap, but more child-friendly. The questions require mostly critical and mathematical thinking, there are only a few lateral thinking questions. The cards are large and colorful. The questions are always accompanied by a large illustration, and the answers often come with diagrams and examples.

The difficulty of each question is reflected in how many points it is worth: yellow questions are worth 1 point, blue are worth 2 points, red are worth 3 points, and "bonus" questions are worth 1 point. Gameplay and scoring take a back seat to the actual questions. You can play for a certain amount of time, for a certain number of cards, or until a player gets a certain score.

DIRTY MINDS The Game of Naughty Clues... is also known as "The world's cleanest dirty game." The dirtier a mind you have, the worse you will be at playing DIRTY MINDS because all of the answers are clean!

A player draws a card, and reads one of the facts about the word (they may choose). Then the other player gets to make one free guess. If they're right, they get three letter cards. If they're wrong, the other players get a chance to steal. If they guess the word, they get one letter card. If they have cards, and get it wrong they lose a letter card. If no one guesses the word, another clue is read. If no one gets it the next time around the players will only receive one letter card from that point on.

Letter cards can be the letters D, I, R, T, or Y; they can also be ~ cards, Wild cards, or Action cards. Players win when they can spell DIRTY.

DIRTY MINDS will provide two or more adults with hours of laughter as seemingly filthy clues point towards the most innocent of answers. Some people say a dirty mind is a terrible thing to waste. Use yours to play DIRTY MINDS, but remember... NOTHING IS AS DIRTY AS IT SEEMS!

TEST HOW DIRTY YOUR MIND IS BY READING THE FOLLOWING CLUES:
- I'm a four letter word.
- I'm a name for a woman.
- I end in u-n-t.
------ What am I?

Part of the 3M Bookshelf Series.

Five cards are drawn. Each card contains a "class" and a list of "categories". A category is selected for each class and the players and five letter tiles are drawn. The players have 5 minutes to come up with an example that begins with each letter for each class/category.

2007 update: Now part of University Game's Bookcase Series. The game has been updated to remove many of the esoteric categories (foreign words, spelling, authors of ______ descent). It's now much more a test of pop culture trivial knowledge and there is no longer the option to select a category only. One must now pick a Category and Topic (the term 'class' was removed). Also, the letter distribution was updated. The box indicates that this edition is copyright 2006.
Contents:
-56 cards
-52 letter chips
-Master Score Pad
-Playing Card Sheets
-Sand Timer(5 minutes)
-Plastic Storage Tray
-Rules(inside lid)
-How to Score Sheet

Players in turn roll the 21 word cubes, set the timer and form sentences with the words appearing on the tops of the cubes in a crossword puzzle-like fashion (one word may be part of two sentences - one running vertically and one running horizontally). Turns end when the egg timer runs out. Players score 50 points for each sentence of 7 words or more. All other sentences score the square of the number of words in the sentence (i.e. a 4-word sentence scores 4 X 4, or 16 points). A bonus of 50 points is awarded if all 21 cubes are used. Two points are deducted for each unused cube.

The 1983 version of the game seems to differ in the number of cubes. The rules on the inside of the box lid still have a 1971 copyright date, but among other differences, they state that the game contains 27 cubes. Two of the new cubes are marked with stars on all six sides, making them wild. From the 1983 rules: "When playing a wild cube, a player must state what word it represents, after which it cannot be changed during that turn."

The 1988 version has 24 cubes - two of which are the starred wild dice. The box states that this is the 2nd edition of the game from Coleco Games. Selchow & Righter is credited in the directions as a subsidiary of Coleco Industries, Inc. The majority of the outer box is blue.