What’s a word-based party game that starts with the letter R but doesn’t have the letter S?
What Is Red Letter Yellow Letter?
Red Letter Yellow Letter is a party game for 2 to 12 players, ages 10 and up, and takes about 20 minutes to play. It retails for $20 and is available in stores and directly from the publisher. The game can be played by kids younger than 10 as long as they can read, though some of the “Thing” categories might be outside their knowledge base.
Red Letter Yellow Letter was designed by Nathan Thornton and published by 25th Century Games, with illustrations by Sarah Kelly.
Red Letter Yellow Letter Components
The components are very simple:
- 36 Red Letter cards
- 36 Yellow Letter cards
- 148 Thing cards
The letter cards are pretty simple: the red letter cards say “DOESN’T have:” across the top, with a large red letter in the center of the card. The yellow letter cards say “Starts with:” across the top, and then shows a large black letter on a yellow background. (Thankfully, they didn’t opt for the always illegible yellow-on-white color scheme!) The mix of letters isn’t exactly the same, but tends to have two copies of a lot of the more common letters and omits some of the less common letters in the English language. For instance, the yellow letters omit J, Q, X, and Z. The red letter set omits more: J, K, Q, V, W, X, Y, and Z are all dropped.
The thing cards are made to look like a few words written on a page torn from a notebook, accompanied by a few doodles, and it’s just a whole lot of different categories: a band, a machine, something that’s fast, a cleaning product.
How to Play Red Letter Yellow Letter
You can download a copy of the rulebook here.
The Goal
The goal of the game is be the first to collect three cards of each type by coming up with words that match the requirements.
Setup
Setup is easy: shuffle all three decks separately, and then place them face-up in the center of the playing area where everyone can see them.
Gameplay
When everyone is ready to begin, discard the top Thing card and the game starts immediately. Note that you don’t take turns—everyone plays at the same time.
You need to come up with a word that starts with the Yellow Letter, doesn’t include the Red Letter, and fits the category shown on the Thing card. When you have one, you just shout it out, and then you get to take one of the three cards to put in your scoring pile. (You may only have 3 of each card type, so if you already have 3 Thing cards then you can’t take any more.)
As soon as a card is taken, that starts the game up again with the newly revealed card. No repeated answers for the same Thing (when somebody takes the Red Letter card)!
If everyone agrees that they can’t come up with an answer for a set of cards, just discard the top Thing card to change the category.
Game End
The game ends when any player has collected 3 of each card—they win!
Why You Should Play Red Letter Yellow Letter
Red Letter Yellow Letter is such a simple idea: just setting the three decks of cards in the center of the table is almost enough to teach the rules. Come up with a word that first the criteria, and you score a card as a point! Easy, right?
But what happens a lot of the time is that the race to come up with a word makes your brain shut down, similar to the old party game Anomia. Suddenly, you can’t think of any words that start with M but have no R. There are sometimes legitimate instances where maybe there’s no answer or only very obscure ones, but most of the time it’s because you see the two letters side by side and your mind immediately jumps to words that include both. (One friend of mine actually held up a hand so he couldn’t see the Red Letter card in the hopes of avoiding this!)
With so many Thing cards, you can play this a bunch before you get a repeat, and even then it’s unlikely you’ll have the same letter combinations, so you can’t rely on using the same answers in the future. I like the mix of simple categories like “a movie” and the more evocative “something that _____” cards.
The simplest ideas can still make for some great gameplay, and we’ve had a lot of laughs with Red Letter Yellow Letter for sure. It’s not a long game that I’d make the centerpiece of a game night, but it’s a great game to warm up with and we usually play a couple times in a row. As I mentioned earlier, the box says ages 10 and up, but any kid who can read and spell a little bit can join in; they might not have as much knowledge about all of the categories (can my kid name any magazines?) but it’s easy enough to sort out enough Thing cards for kids too.
If you’re looking for a quick party game, check out Red Letter Yellow Letter!
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Disclosure: GeekDad received a copy of this game for review purposes.
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