Word Challenge (1979)

Word Challenge was designed by a teacher in remedial reading to be an aid to strengthening reading skills in students, but the games it includes are fun in their own right.

It includes a deck of 108 cards (104 letters and 4 wild cards), 100 plastic chips, and a rules book with rules for 16 different games, including:


Word Challenge. A form of contract rummy. Each of the 7 hands requires a player to meld words of a certain size (from two 3-letter words to three 4-letter words) before laying off the rest of their hand.
Word Rummy. Normal rummy, where players draw, meld words and discard. When one player empties their hand all stop and score according to the length of the words they made.
Cincos. Each player deals out a 5x5 grid. For each row and column, the player who makes the longest word in their grid gets chips from the others.
Barter I. Each player has 5 cards and 10 chips. Until a player can spell a 5-letter word, cards are turned up 1 by 1 and players can bid on them with chips.
Read My Mind. In a turn, one spells a word and the next player tries to recreate it given its letters, getting points for how well they do.
The Chips are Down. A variant on Spoons.
Memory Game. A variant on Concentration/Pelmanism, where players turn up 3 cards and try to spell a word of 3 or 2 letters.
Go Dig. Like Go Fish with word making.
Quick Trick. One player quickly reveals cards 1 at a time in a row; when anyone can spell a word from the revealed letters they call out the word, play pauses, and they collect the letters in that word.
Chipper Snitcher. Each player gets 5 cards, and estimates how long a word they'll be able to make after exchanging up to 3 cards. If the can spell a word that long they get its length in chips, unless another player can spell a longer word from those letters, in which case they get those chips.

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