🧩 Ludemes

A ludeme is a building block of a game's rules. Once you can name them, you start to see the same block in games that look completely different — the word game and the board game that both use Connection. Here are the blocks our games are built from.

Connection

Join your two sides of the board with a chain of your tiles — like building a bridge.

Games that use it: SpanForge FerryTots GridForge

Trace

Draw a path from tile to touching tile — here it must spell a real word.

Games that use it: SpanForge

Word (the Meaning Rule)

A move only counts when the tiles spell a real word — and its meaning pops up.

Games that use it: SpanForge FlipPals LexiTales SoundTots

Flip (custodial capture)

Flank a piece — your ends, their middle — and the middle flips to become yours.

Games that use it: FlipPals GridForge

Capture

Surround or jump a piece to take it off the board.

Games that use it: CrownTales CannonTales GridForge

Sowing

Scoop up a pit and drop one seed in each pit around the board.

Games that use it: SeedSong

Anagram

Rearrange a jumble of letters into a real word.

Games that use it: LexiTales SeedSong

Subtraction (Nim)

Take some away each turn — the trick is not being the one left with the last.

Games that use it: NimForge

Sound (phoneme)

Match by the SOUND at the start of a word, not the letter you see.

Games that use it: SoundTots

Building your own game? Pick a few ludemes and combine them — that's how every game here started.