🃏 Can you buy a Wild Tile? Now the Master decides

The Wild Tile is one of the best-loved rules in LexiSmash: a special tile that can replace any letter and often saves a word that would otherwise be impossible. When it’s on, every letter has a certain chance of coming out as a Wild Tile, the one the Master sets in the “⭐ Wildcard Tile Settings” panel. Until today that chance applied to every letter in the same way: both the ones drawn for free at the start of the round and the ones bought with points.

For many game nights that’s perfectly fine. But some people prefer a more balanced game: buying letters is already an advantage, and getting a Wild Tile with your points on top of it can tip the scales too far towards whoever has built up a good lead.

How it works

In the “🪙 Letter Buying” menu of the Master’s panel, right below the field with the cost of an extra letter, there’s a new switch: “🃏 Bought Letters Can Be Wild Tiles”. It’s on by default, so nothing changes compared to before: bought letters can come out as Wild Tiles with the same chance set for the Wild Tile.

Turn it off and a bought letter will never be a Wild Tile: you always buy a real vowel or consonant. The letters drawn for free on the board keep following the Wild Tile rule as always. The switch only appears when the Wild Tile is on: if it’s off, there would be nothing to adjust, so it stays hidden.

The choice applies to every bought letter, public or private, and it’s also enforced by the game server, so it can’t be bypassed. Like every other setting, it’s saved in your configurations and reloaded with a click, and when it’s off it shows up in the room’s rules summary, so everyone knows before starting.

A concrete example

Picture a game with the Wild Tile at 10%. Whoever is in the lead has points to spend and buys three letters a round: with the switch on, every now and then one of them will be a Wild Tile, and their lead will grow even more. With the switch off, Wild Tiles only come from the board, where they’re available to everyone: whoever buys gets extra letters, but the luck of the Wild Tile stays the same for all.

A practical tip

If you play with friends of very different levels, try turning the switch off together with the Leaderboard Modifiers: for example, making letters more expensive for whoever is first. It’s an easy way to keep the game open until the last round. For more ideas on setting up the rules, you’ll find everything on the Rules and strategies page.