How to play The Shake

Real dice, not sixteen random letters

The 1983 set was tuned over years against the board that ruins an evening — three vowels and a Q — and a uniform grid deals one about as often as it deals a good one.

The Qu die is one face and two letters, exactly as it is in the box.

Trace it or type it; they are the same move

The rule is that the word exists and can be walked across touching letters. Requiring a drag would lock out anybody on a keyboard for no gain.

Your browser answers three of the four ways a word gets refused — too short, not a path, already yours — because the grid is public. Whether it is a word is the one question that goes to the server, and the dictionary stays there for the obvious reason.

Duplicates cancel, so there is no running score

Anything more than one of you wrote down is struck off both lists at the buzzer. What your words are worth is genuinely unknowable until every pen is down.

Then the whole table turns over at once: every word, who had it, and the long ones nobody found.

Questions people ask

Why is there no score while the clock is running?

Because there cannot be one. A word two of you found is worth nothing to either of you, so nothing can be totalled until every pen is down. The reckoning at the buzzer is the moment the game happens.

Are the bots just faster than me?

No — they have vocabularies rather than difficulty settings. The Dabbler does not know PLINTH; it is not letting you have it. The Magpie will walk past CAT for ninety seconds hunting a seven, and sometimes lands one that takes the shake outright. They plan the whole round before the clock starts, so they cannot duck a duplicate any more than you can.

Does anybody have to install anything to play The Shake?

No. It runs in the browser everyone already has open. One person opens a room, reads out the six-character code or pastes the link into the channel, and everyone else is at the table in a couple of seconds.

Do we need accounts?

No. There is no sign-up, no password and no email address anywhere in the flow. You pick a name when you sit down, and that is the whole of it.

How many people can play The Shake?

1 to 12 — best with four, and one bot you resent. A room seats up to 12.

How long does a game of The Shake take?

About 10 minutes, which is the length of a coffee break rather than the length of a games night. Nobody is the host in the sense of holding the controls, so a round finishes whether or not everyone is still looking at it.

Does it work over a video call?

That is what it is for. The game is on the screen and the talking is on the call — nobody has to describe a board to anybody, and the parts that must stay private stay on the server rather than being read out.