Games · Bent walad · The rules

The rules

Bent walad: the rules

Bent walad ("girl, boy"): one letter, six words, faster than your friends. These are the rules exactly as Dineri plays them.

The game

  • Two to ten players, each alone; the owner starts the table when at least two are seated. No bots: judging words needs people.
  • Each round a letter is drawn at random, never twice in a game. Everyone writes a word starting with it in six fields: a boy's name, a girl's name, an animal, a plant, an object, a country.
  • The owner chooses, when creating the table, Latin letters (A to Z, without W, X, Y and Z) or Arabic letters (all 28), and 5, 10 or 15 rounds. The most points at the end wins; equal points share the win.

Writing

  • Everyone writes at the same time. Nobody sees anyone's words until the writing ends; you only see how many fields each player has filled.
  • Finished? Press Done (you can still change your words until the writing ends).
  • When half the players (rounded up) are done, a 10-second countdown starts; when everyone is done, the writing ends at once. The owner can start the countdown at any time.

Judging

  • When the writing ends, everyone sees every answer, one category at a time, following the owner.
  • The site strikes on its own: empty fields, answers that don't start with the letter, and identical answers in a category (all of them). Capitals, accents, spaces and punctuation don't make a difference, nor in Arabic the article ال and the forms of alef, taa marbuta and alef maqsura.
  • The owner judges: strike any answer (not a real boy's name, not an animal…), restore one the site struck, or mark two answers as the same ("Tunis" and "Tunisie"), which strikes both. Then the owner confirms.

Points

  • One point for each answer that stands.
  • Scores are shown after each round; the next round starts when everyone continues, or after 20 seconds. A player who drops out writes nothing until they're back.
Play Bent walad