Game equipment and games

Abstract

Alphabet game equipment for the playing of alphabet, word, numerical, and / or other amusement and educational games, said alphabet game equipment comprising one or more pluralities of playing faces, a said plurality of playing faces consisting essentially of, in combination, a plurality of base character playing faces and one or a combination of pluralities of supplementary character playing faces, a said plurality of supplementary character playing faces being a member selected from the group consisting of Repeat character playing faces, bonus character playing faces, and a combination of Wild and Super Wild character playing faces. Also, alphabet compendium games including trick-taking games, pseudo trick-taking games, and a Wood Picker game, and alphabet and word puzzle games including a Table Puzzle game and a Seven Lives game.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0001] 1. Field of the Invention [0002] The present invention relates to game equipment and games. More particularly it relates to alphabet and numerical game equipment, alphabet and numerical games, word games and puzzles, and pseudo trick-taking games. [0003] 2. Description of the Prior Art [0004] Alphabet game equipment comprising alphabet playing pieces, and alphabet games for amusement or educational purposes, are known in the prior art, with limitations and disadvantages. Also known in the prior art are numerical game equipment and numerical games. [0005] The most well known and commercially the single most successful alphabet game equipment and alphabet game ever introduced is the tile based cross word board game equipment and game commercially sold first in 1948, later improved with features disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,752,158 to Brunot and Brunot (issued on Jun. 26, 1956), and currently sold in the United States under the trademark of SCRABBLE™....

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0033] Still another object of the invention is to provide game equipment that comprises playing faces having alphabet character and numerical indicia designs that allow formation of melds in novel or a greater number of ways during the playing of a game.

[0035] A yet further object of the invention is to provide game equipment comprising playing faces having alphabet character and numerical indicia designs that allow new and useful, or more convenient, ways of scoring in a game.

[0060] One of such alphabet puzzle games is the Table Puzzle game of the present invention, which shares certain desirable features and advantages with the Wheel of Fortune™ TV game, and also has its own new features and advantages. One of its own new features is a feature characterized by a puzzle solving player taking a turn choosing a puzzle playing piece, among the puzzle playing pieces forming the puzzle of a word, phrase, cross-word grid, or sentence, and requesting the puzzle host player to turn the piece face up to reveal the character displayed by the piece. The choosing is played by way of the puzzle solving player pointing to or identifying the location of the puzzle playing piece he / she chooses, rather than by guessing and calling out an alphabet letter. Another of the new features of the Table Puzzle game of the present invention is the use of numerical point value indicia on playing faces, revealed as the playing faces are turned up in the playing of the game, to determine the amount of reward or penalty a player taking a turn revealing a playing face receives, rather than the use of a Wheel. The advantages of the Table Puzzle game of the present invention include that of a much simpler game set up, which makes the game of the present invention much more convenient to play at home and in other informal settings.

Problems solved by technology

Limitations and disadvantages of alphabet game equipment of the prior art include one or more of the following: disadvantageous alphabet letter distribution, disadvantageous numerical indicia design or lack of numerical indicia necessary for certain games, an excessively large number of alphabet playing pieces, and limited playability in general, as further cited below.

Alphabet game equipment having irregular alphabet letter distributions suffers a common disadvantage of being difficult to familiarize with, difficult to memorize, and difficult for playing piece tracking during the playing of a game.

An irregular alphabet letter distribution renders a set of alphabet playing pieces difficult or impossible to use in the playing of games that require classification or grouping of playing pieces other than grouping by formation of words.

Alphabet game equipment of the prior art suffers from disadvantageous numerical indicia designs or lack of numerical indicia.

Some of the latest prior art patents consider the presence of numerical indicia on the alphabet playing pieces a disadvantage (see, e.g., the Wall ice May 22, 2001 patent).

Disadvantages associated with irregular numerical point value indicia designs of the alphabet game equipment of the prior art include: (a.) being difficult to familiarize and to memorize (b.) being difficult or impossible to use as melding indicia, i.e., indicia based on which a meld may be formed or playing pieces may be classified or grouped, for the purpose of playing an interesting game, (c.) being inconvenient or impossible to use for certain advanced ways of numerical point value indicia based score calculation or ranking, and (d.) being less adapted to or impossible for the playing of numerical ga

Such equipment fail to provide the advantages and utilities of numerical point value indicia, or the advantages and utilities that a set of game equipment having numerical point value indicia may provide, such as the allowing of numerical games and numerical point value based score calculations and ranking.

The attempts were not successful because they aimed at improving the game equipment of the prior art on some aspects while failing to maintain the advantages on other aspects, in many cases introducing significant disadvantages of their own.

While these prior art disclosures introduced alphabet game equipment having regular alphabet letter distributions easier to familiarize with and track during the playing of a game, a significant disadvantage is also introduced, namely, that, in construction of words from the alphabet playing pieces, often some letters that are more frequently used in the words of the alphabetic language, or occur repeated multiple times in a word, have an insufficient number of playing pieces while for less frequently used alphabet letters there are often excessive numbers of redundant playing pieces in the set of the game equipment.

The number of alphabet playing pieces in alphabet game equipment of the prior art in most instances is excessively large, typically one hundred or more.

The large number of playing pieces adds to the burden of playing piece tracking in the playing of a game.

On the other hand, alphabet game equipment of the prior art that has less alphabet playing pieces, such as the commercial ROYALTY™ game equipment, and the game equipment of the Wallice patent (May 22, 2001), the Hagedorn patent (Jun. 30, 1998), and the Manchester patent (Jun. 17, 1997), and other game equipment having fifty or so playing pieces or playing faces, suffers from the disadvantage of having an insufficient number of replicate alphabet playing pieces for the playing of certain games involving construction of words requiring a greater number of replicate alphabet letters.

The prior art has not offered a comprehensive array of games remotely comparable to the vast number of games possible with the traditional deck of playing cards.

Heretofore, no trick-taking types of games of sufficient success have been developed for playing with alphabet and words of an alphabetic language using alphabet playing cards or playing pieces.

Although attempts have been made to include alphabet characters on the playing faces of the traditional deck of playing cards (e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 1,012,574 Adams Dec. 26, 1911), for the purpose of extending the range of games playable with the traditional deck of playing cards to include alphabet and word games, heretofore such attempts have largely failed to attain the desired objects and failed to reach any stage of substantial commercial success.

Another limitation of the traditional deck of playing cards is its history of association with gambling and casino games disliked by many who are interested in the cards only for recreational or educational purposes.

A further limitation of the traditional deck of playing cards is its specialized face design that is less understandable or appealing to children and that is less adapted to the playing of educational games or games having an educational theme.

The home game version of the TV Wheel of Fortune™ game fails to inherit the significant advantages of the elaborate TV game show, while retaining much of the complications of the TV game show settings, which is a significant disadvantage for a home game.

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