Ghost — the rules of the word game

Ghost

балдаустная балда

A word is grown one letter at a time, and whoever finishes it loses: the whole point is to add a letter without completing anything.

Players name one letter each in turn, and the grows: c — ca — cat. Whoever's letter turned the fragment into a finished word loses.

Hence an oddity you have to get used to: you think not about the word but about whom it will fall to. The letter to add is not any letter but one that leaves a continuation existing — and leaves it to your neighbour.

The second layer is bluff. Any letter at all may be named, including one with no word behind it. That passes while nobody asks; hence the , which ends very nearly half the rounds.

Players2+

CategoriesVerbal games

ObjectiveKeep the word growing without completing it, and avoid collecting five lost rounds.

Rules of Ghost

The start

Players sit in a circle. The first names any letter.

Before play they agree from what length a fragment counts as a finished word: usually four letters.

A turn

A player names one letter, which is added to the right of the fragment.

The letter named must leave the fragment the beginning of at least one real word. The player must have a particular word in mind, and must not say what it is.

Losing a round

A round is lost by whoever:

completed a finished word of the agreed length;
named a letter after which the fragment was no longer the start of any word at all — and it came out on a challenge.

Challenges

In place of their turn a player may challenge the one before them, who must then name the word they had in mind.

the word is named and fits the fragment — the challenger loses the round;
there is no word, or it does not fit — the challenged player loses the round.

Score

For each round lost a player takes a letter: the first loss G, then H, O, S and T.

Whoever collects all five is out.

End of the game

The game ends when one player is left.

The next round

The next round is begun by whoever sits after the player who lost the last one.

Worth knowing

From what length a fragment counts as a word is agreed beforehand: usually four letters, sometimes three — otherwise the game would end on the second turn. Whether proper nouns and inflected forms are allowed is for the group to decide as well.