Letter Jam First Impressions

Letter Jam is a word game where you can’t see your own letters.

Can your team help you find them?

Letter Jam is a cooperative word game where players assist each other in composing meaningful words from letters around the table. The trick is holding the letter card so that it’s only visible to other players and not to you.

Letter Jam Game Overview

Quick Rules Summary

You have a number of cards, 5 in our case face down and each of these is a letter that spells a 5-letter word. They are shuffled and placed face down, the leftmost one is put in a stand facing outwards. Players will not look at their own letters.

Players will suggest a word they can spell using the letters they can see. These are the other player’s letters and some generic letters that were added to help.

They don’t say what the word is, they just say something like “It’s 6 letters long, uses 1 generic letter and can help 3 players”. The player whose suggestion was taken places numbered tokens in front of those letters to show the order the letters are in.

Players can then try and guess their letter and move on to the next one. If they didn’t get a clue or don’t feel they have enough info they can play the next round with the same letter. Each round costs a clue token.

How do you win?

If players run out of clue tokens they all lose.

If players want to try their word they do. They each rearrange their letter cards, keeping them face down. If, when revealed they spell a word they did well. If more than half the players do this correctly everyone wins.

Main Mechanisms

Limited communication with deduction.

USP

Nothing really.

Theme

None really.

Setup & Rulebook

The setup looked painstaking. You have to hold each card over your phone so the app can tell you which pile to put it in. It’s a decent way of making sure the right cards go to the right players I guess.

The rulebook is awful. It has sentences like “If more or less everyone has spelled a word, then you have all more or less won.” It’s so vague and poorly written.

It also says “You don’t have to spell the word you were given. If you were given HORSE, you can spell SHORE.” This makes sense, if the 5 letters spell multiple words then any should be allowed.

Then it says “You can use a bonus E to spell SHEER or even HEROES.” NO! You’re not spelling your word if you spell a word that doesn’t use the letters you were given. Why not just get a random 5 letters and spell any word in that case? Stupid.

Components & Artwork

They do the job, nothing special.

Ease of Teaching

It’s easy to teach but it’s usually difficult for new players during these games with reduced communication.

Just paraphrase the rulebook so you don’t confuse people.

Similar Games

Cards facing away from the player has that Hanabi thing about it, but this is less stressful.

As for limited communication word games, I would rather play Werewords but Just One, which isn’t necessarily ‘limited communication’ is good fun.

Letter Jam Review

Positives

The deduction part is really fun.

I liked solving the puzzles to help to solve the larger puzzle.

Negatives

The app art and setup looked tedious.

Limited communication can cause issues, for example, one player accidentally said there were no vowels on the table.

The rulebook and some of the rules are a joke.

Letter Jam Summary

I’ll play this again (with experienced players).

Jesta ThaRogue