Description

The Numenko board game resembles Scrabble in that players have wooden tiles and lay valid combinations of tiles in horizontal and vertical rows, sometimes reusing tiles on the board in their current plays.

What differs is that the tiles in Numenko feature digits (0-9), a Multichoice symbol (that stands for the player's choice of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division or "is equal to"), and a Freechoice symbol (that can be a digit or Multichoice).

Each player starts with eight tiles on his rack. On a turn, a player plays one or more tiles to the game board (possibly using tiles already in play) to create a valid equation, with the operators being resolved left to right or top to bottom, except for division which always takes place first. A Multichoice or Freesymbol tile can be used as a new operator or number if a player adds tiles to an existing equation. If a player places tiles adjacent to tiles already on the board, he does not have to create a valid equation (unlike Scrabble in which each multiletter combination must be a valid word). The sum or product of a player's equation is that player's score for the round; if any part of the equation's answer covers a "D" on the game board, that player's score for the round is doubled. The player then refills his hand to eight tiles.

Instead of playing tiles, a player can swap any number of tiles from his hand for new tiles or simply pass.

When one player has no tiles and the bag is empty – or when all players pass in succession – the game ends, and the player with the highest score wins.