Fives: A Simple Game

by Mike

THIS IS NOT YOUR FATHER'S ANIMALBALL

Here at Animalball Games, finding and creating new games is a family affair. So in this article, I share with you two word games given to us by our father. Both are very simple and fun and don’t require any special materials to play.

FIVES

Dad never gave a name for this one, but in college my friends and I started calling it Fives. Dad taught us to play it one year on vacation at the beach, probably in the mid-1980’s. Whenever they got together, him and his own mom and dad played word-based board games… Scrabble, Boggle, that sort of thing. So Fives was a natural fit for them. If you’ve played Mastermind, you’ll catch on quick.

Players…
Fives is a head-to-head game for two players. Over the years, we’ve improvised rules for three or four players or playing with teams, but the game is really only meant for two at a time.

Getting started…
Each player needs a piece of paper and a pencil and a five letter target word. Start off by writing the alphabet at the top of your paper—all 26 letters—you’ll need that for reference later. Then write your target word on the back of your paper somewhere, but don’t reveal it to your opponent.

All target words and guess words used for this game must be:
1. exactly five letters long
2. English words found in an ordinary dictionary (no proper names, punctuation, capital letters or slang)
3. and most importantly must not repeat any letters. So ROLES would be acceptable, but ROSES would not, because it has two S’s in it.

It is important that your target word be one that your opponent should reasonably be familiar with. No fair using words that only crossword makers know. When it comes to guess words (see below), you’re free to be as obscure as you like, as long as the word meets the requirements above (I’m looking at you, CRWTH.)

Playing the game…
Now players take turns trying to guess each other’s target words.

The first player comes up with a guess word and writes it down on his own paper. The opponent then responds by telling how many letters of the guess word are also in the target word. The guessing player writes this number down next to the guess word. So if my word is PIANO, and you guess BANJO, I would tell you 3. If however, your next guess was BLUES, then I would tell you zero.

The players take turns coming up with guess words, attempting to narrow down the letters in the opponent’s target word. This is where that alphabet at the top of the paper comes in handy so players can mark letters that they know for sure are right or wrong.

Winning…
Whoever guesses their opponent’s word correctly in the fewest number of guesses wins. It doesn’t matter who goes first, because it is the actual number of guesses that counts, and ties are possible.

Correct pronunciation of the word is not required. All that matters is getting all five letters in the correct order.

Strategy…
Choosing a word that has an anagram sometimes buys you an extra turn or two. Nothing is more frustrating than thinking you have won and then having your opponent tell you “5,” but you still haven’t gotten it. A good example is the word SPINE whose letters can be rearranged to form at least three other words.

Making a guess and having your opponent tell you you have no letters correct is one of the most valuable things that can happen. Immediately, you get to cross five letters off your list as well as crossing them out of all your previous guesses.

Use letters that have been positively eliminated as dummy letters in other words. For example, if I’ve eliminated B, C, K, and L, then I can use BLACK to determine whether or not there is an A in the word.

The holy grail of Fives is finding five guess words that encompass 25 letters of the alphabet. Different attempts have come up with four guess words that don’t share any letters, but never five. An example of four would be: NYMPH, GOURD, EXITS, and BLACK. Groups like this are useful, because anytime you can find two or three or four words that contain all five letters of the target word, then you are able to cross off all of the other letters. For example, if I guess NYMPH… 2, EXITS… 2, and GOURD… 1, then I know all five of my opponent’s letters are contained here, and I can cross off the other 11 letters of the alphabet. [Yes, I know that logically having a set of four words is just as handy in actual gameplay as five, but the quest for five distinct non-overlapping guess words for Fives has been a fun side quest for all these years.]

NOTE that my Internet explorations have revealed at least one other version of this game presented on the web with nearly identical rules. We have just always assumed that our dad invented Fives (cuz he’s all smart like that), but I don’t think that he ever made that claim himself. Either way, it’s highly addictive fun.

THE LICENSE PLATE GAME

This one’s really easy, and one you can play by yourself. The only requirements are that you be in a moving vehicle and that you live in a state that generally has three or more letters on most license plates.

As you drive, spot a license plate and pick out the letters on it. If there are other players in the car, call out the letters so that everyone is on the same page. Now the goal is to come up with the shortest common English word that incorporates all of those letters. If there are duplicates of a letter on the license plate, then the word must contain at least as many of the given letter as appear on the plate.

With multiple players, the first person to come up with the shortest word is the winner. So if the letters are XLP, then my immediate answer would be “explode”—seven letters. If you come up with “complex,” it doesn’t count, because it’s still seven letters. You’d need to come up with a word of six letters or less that contains X, L, and P in order to beat me. When playing with other people, once you announce a word out loud, you may not try again for that license plate unless someone else comes up with a word that is shorter than yours, and then you may try to top them.

For example, with the letters RPP, I might say, “proper.” Then I cannot try again unless someone beats my word. So if you then come up with “paper,” then I am free to try again and use “prop.”

Once everyone in the car has given up, find another license plate and start over. If you’re the kind of person who likes to keep score, you’re welcome to it, but who wants the hassle of record keeping while you’re driving?

Alternate Rules. The more civil version of this game requires that everyone in the car trust each other. But in this version, once the letters are announced, everyone is given time to come up with a word. Then, once everyone has a word, they take turns sharing, and the shortest word wins. In this version, everyone has to be honest, and ties are possible.