Do you enjoy watching TV quiz shows? There are some great entertaining ones on over the various channels. Or maybe you like playing the very popular online word game that took off all over the world not so long ago – Wordle. Well now you can combine the two and play the two games in a family board game based on the on the popular television show LINGO.
LINGO is a popular daytime television quiz show, hosted by Adil Ray, where contestants have to know their lingo (words) and work out what the word is from just one starting letter. The board game version works in the same way. LINGO the board game is a game for 3 or more players, aged 10+.
Based on the popular TV quiz show, LINGO is the addictive, simple to play word game for the whole family. With only the first letter given, players take turns to solve a series of mystery words (LINGOs) against the clock, by writing their answers on the large wipe-clean game unit. Each letter guessed correctly is highlighted as follows – green if the letter is in the correct position, yellow if it is part of the LINGO, but in the wrong position or red if the LINGO doesn’t contain that letter at all.
Solve a LINGO correctly and bank the money and try to solve the much longer end of round Puzzlewords but run out of time and your opponents can steal. How quickly can you LINGO when the pressure is on?
In the box:
- LINGO Game Unit (including wipe-clean panel and back board)
- Puzzleword Board (including 11 doors and wipe-clean panel)
- 10x Initial Letter Panel (double-sided)
- Marker Tiles (16x Green, 16x Yellow and 20x Red)
- 20 Seconds Sand Timer (blue colour)
- 90 Seconds Sand Timer (red colour)
- 2x Blank Panels
- Score Pad
- Dry-wipe Pen
- Instruction Leaflet (including LINGO dictionary)
Setting up the game to play is very simple and the instructions explain it very well. The LINGO game unit (6×5 grid) needs some very quick assembly – the game grid needs placing on the stand and the wipe-clean board placed on the rear of the grid. Each player/team is given a sheet from the score pad.
Playing the game is straightforward. It requires a minimum of 3 players – one player is the Question Master and the rest of the players split into two teams.
The object of the game is to win as much money as you can by guessing four and five letter hidden LINGOs (words) and the twelve letter LINGO on the puzzleboard. Each game consists of three rounds followed by the End Game.
Round 1: 4-letter LINGOs – the Question Master (QM) inserts the two blanking panels into the LINGO game unit, leaving 5 lines each with 4 squares across. They then select a word from the LINGO dictionary (instruction leaflet). The QM then inserts an initial letter panel into the game unit at the start of the word (this is the first letter of the word that needs to be guessed). The QM then turns the LINGO game unit around so that all players can see it and turns over the 20 second sand timer. The team whose turn it is now has 20 seconds to guess the word. The QM writes their answer by writing the letters on to the squares on the dry-wipe board. The QM then drops the coloured markers in to the game unit – green for where a letter is correct and the right position, yellow for if a letter is in the word but in the wrong position and red for if the letter isn’t in the word. The QM then resets the timer, and the player/team has another 20 seconds to guess the LINGO using the new information gained. If the player/team gets to the top of the game unit and fails to guess the LINGO (you have 5 attempts) play passes to the other team. The player/team that guesses the word correctly wins £200 and circles it on the score sheet. If no player/team gets the LINGO then play continues with a new 4-letter LINGO until someone gets it right. Play continues until 3 4-letter LINGOs have been played.
Round 2: 5-letter LINGOs – this is played the same way as the 4-letter LINGO in round 1 except that instead of 2 blanking panels placed into the game unit you use only one. For guessing a 5-letter LINGO you win £300.
Round 3: Quickfire LINGOs – each team plays a 4 and 5-letter LINGO and there is no passing over to the other team. Depending on what line the LINGO is correctly guessed players can win £500, £450, £400, £350, £300 or £0 (if not guessed correctly).
Puzzlewords – this is played at the end of rounds 1, 2 and 3 and both teams play together. The QM selects a 12-letter word from the LINGO dictionary and writes it in to the spaces on the puzzleboard and closes the 11 doors so that only the initial letter is displayed. The QM reads the puzzleboard clue and then turns the puzzleboard to face the players. The players then have to guess the word with the QM flipping doors at 1 second intervals. Players score between £25 and £100 (depending on the round) for each uncovered letter when the word is guessed correctly.
End Game – both teams/players play the End Game. The player/team with the lowest amount of money won goes first (check your scorecard). Teams have to guess a 4, 5 and 6-letter LINGO all within 90 seconds. The game is played the same way as before just using the 90 second timer instead of the 20 second timer (the sand timer is placed on its side to pause the game whilst the QM is writing in the letters and adding the markers). Guess the 4-letter LINGO and you win half you grand total score, guess the 4 and 5-letter LINGO and you win your grand total score but guess the 4, 5 and 6 letter LINGOs and you win double your grand total score.
The player/team with the highest score at the end of the game is the winner.
Overall, we have loved playing LINGO – it is just like the show on television and is lots of fun. As there are four of use playing and one has to be the QM so can’t take part in the actual game we couldn’t split into equal teams. We used the alternative rule of then splitting into three teams with only the two highest scoring teams going into round 3 and we also played it with our own rules of having one adult as QM, the other adult on 1 team by themselves and the 2 children making up a team together. Whatever way we played they all worked equally as well.
LINGO is an addictive and fun family word-guessing game to play. We have all enjoyed playing it, obviously changing the QM each time (usually the adults) so that everybody gets turns at playing. But it really is an excellent game to play and has even been helping the children with thinking about spelling things correctly, so an added bonus.
If you are looking for a fun family TV show board game to play over the festive season, you can’t go wrong with LINGO. It would make an excellent gift this year for quiz loving gamers and television quiz show fans of all ages.
Rating: 5/5
RRP: £24.99
For more information, visit www.johnadams.co.uk. Available to buy from Amazon here.
