Patent US 4,055,348

A word building game using a chance device to display letters is disclosed. The chance device displays consonants only, and the players construct words by utilizing consonants displayed through the chance means in appropriate arrangement with any number and variety of vowels of their choice. The frequency of display through the chance device of any consonant with respect to other consonants is in direct and nearly exact ratio to the actual known frequencies of occurrence of the consonants in an extensive stock of words specially compiled from an authoritative listing of the words used most frequently in the vocabulary of a particular language.* In the preferred embodiment, a set of five regular icosahedral dice is used as the chance device, with the consonants on the faces of the dice being those of the English alphabet. Scoring of a constructed word is based both on its length (the total number of letters used) and on the number of displayed consonants employed in its construction. No differential scoring values are assigned to individual letters: all vowels ad consonants have an identical unitary value. FNT * Such a special word-compilation, for any particular language, is referred to hereinafter as a "stock vocabulary".