How to Play

Everything you need to know before your first game.

Score points by using the letters in your rack to build Hawaiian, Pidgin and local slang words on the board, across or down. The first word played has to cover the shaka square in the middle.

You score points for every word you make, based on the value of the tiles used. Use all seven letters in one play and you get a 25-point Bingo Bango bonus on top of your word score.

Your first turn

1. Pick a mode

   Play against the computer, on your own, two players on one device, or online against a friend.

2. Build a word through the middle

   Drag tiles from your rack onto the board. Your first word has to cross the shaka square at the centre. If you turned the Starting Word option on, a local word is already sitting there to get things moving — it scores nothing for anybody.

3. Play it

   Tap Play. The word strip shows you what you made and what it scored. Not happy with it? Recall your tiles and try something else before you commit.

4. Keep building

   From then on, every word has to connect to what's already on the board, the way a crossword does.

The AK square — our own invention

AK stands for Anykine. There are two ways to use it, and it's the thing that makes this game play differently from every other word game.

Put your own tile on it and it works like a Double Letter square — that tile scores double.

Or activate it. When an AK square lines up with the word you're building, it starts glowing. Tap it and choose any letter you want. That letter comes out of the tile bag and you score its face value.

Letters that are used up in the bag show as shaded. You can still pick one — it just plays as a blank and scores zero. Hawaiian words love their vowels, so the AK opens up all kinds of strategy.

Changed your mind? Recalling your tiles resets any AK you activated. Nothing leaves the bag until you actually play the word.

Bonus squares

• AK Anykine
• TL Triple Letter
• DW Double Word
• TW Triple Word

Bonus squares only count the first time they're covered.

Blank tiles

There are two blank tiles in the bag. They show up on your rack as a plain blank with no letter and no number on it. Drag one onto the board and you choose which letter it stands in for — any letter you like.

The catch is that a blank scores nothing, no matter which letter you turn it into. It still completes a word, it still triggers a bonus square for the rest of the word, and it still counts toward using all seven tiles for the Bingo Bango. It just contributes zero points itself.

The Hawaiian Word Bonus

Play a Hawaiian word five letters or longer and you earn a +10 point bonus on top of your word score.

Hawaiian words lean heavily on vowels, and vowels are the cheapest tiles in the bag — so a player who actually knows Hawaiian can make beautiful words and watch them score almost nothing. This bonus is there to even that up.

The rules of it:

• The word has to be in the Hawaiian dictionary. Pidgin and slang words don't count, and neither does a Hawaiian word with an English plural S stuck on the end.
• The +10 is added after all your letters and bonus squares are tallied, so a Double or Triple Word square won't multiply it.
• Two qualifying Hawaiian words in the same play still earns +10, not +20.
• You can use a letter from the predetermined starting word to build a bonus word, but you can't add onto the starting word itself to make one.
• An AK square can help you complete a bonus word.

Swapping and passing

• Swap — trade in any of your tiles for new ones. A standard swap uses up your turn, and swapping is switched off when fewer than seven tiles are left in the bag.
• Swap+ — swap without losing your turn. The first consecutive use costs 1 coin, the second costs 2. Playing, passing, or using Swap & Pass resets it back to 1.
• Pass — skip your turn and score nothing.

How a game ends

Two ways:

1. A player uses their last tile with the bag empty. Every point left in the other player's rack is subtracted from them and added to the finisher's score.
2. Six scoreless turns in a row — both players passing, swapping or scoring zero three times each. Each player then subtracts their own remaining rack points from their own total.

Highest score after the final maths wins, and equal scores are a draw. In a rematch, whoever lost the last game goes first.

The dictionary

Look up any word in the game to check a spelling or find out what something means. Hawaiian words, Pidgin words and phrases, and local slang are all searchable. Acceptable Pidgin and slang phrases combine two or three small words — type them with no spaces: NOACK, NOGETUM, NOMAKE.

About the Pidgin words

Pidgin was never a formally written language. It's been passed down and changing since plantation days, so there's no single right way to spell anything — just more common ways. That's why many words here have alternate spellings: BRADA can also be BRADAH, BRADDA, BRADDAH or BRUDDA. LIDAT can be LADAT or LIDDAT. Experiment. The dictionary shows you the alternates.

Got a word we're missing?

Send it to us with its meaning and an example sentence, and after we've checked it we'll do our best to add it. See the Contact page.

A word about the words