So now, the 2nd playtest group wants words categorized into Easy, Medium, and Hard. I've pretty much decided to have it as such:
3 & 4 letter words = Easy 5 & 6 letter words = Medium 7 letter words = hard
EASY: I can't really find a balance between 3 and 4 letter words. My original idea was to have 3 letter words have 2 of the same vowels, like BOO, EWE, BEE, and so on. Since there are more vowels than consonants, I think this helps 3-letter words more than anything. I guess I could make 4-letter words have 2 of the same vowel like BEEN, FEED, WOOD, AWAY, and so on. 1 letter more but easy to find.
MEDIUM: As for 5 & 6 letter words, I was thinking of doing the exact opposite of 3 & 4. 5-letter words will have 2 of the same consonant in the word. Examples are: FIFTH, PIPES, RURAL, TALLY, GYPSY, DODGE, VIVID, and so on. 6-letter words will not have any repeating consonants and, for the majority, will not have repeating vowels. PILFER, HALVES, TWELVE, DESIGN, FLOTSAM, JETSAM, ANIMAL,GOTHIC, STRIFE, and so on.
HARD: 7-letter words: The only guideline is that NO letters will repeat. Not even vowels. VICTORY, DEFIANT, CAUTION, MISERLY, FLOWERS, CAREFUL, MIRACLE, TARNISH. I'm also thinking of adding 6-letter words that contain repeating consonants. CIRCUS, TARIFF, KILLER, HAMMER, TAUGHT, WINDOW, GOBBLE, PUZZLE, and so on.
With these guidelines, this is now organized chaos. With organization, comes restriction. Themed expansions (which the 2nd group would like to see) are near impossible to create. I DO feel, though, that I have a solid system now. I only have to create the list of words as I have begun in this blog post and transfer it to the game sticks.
