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Spella comes with 100 Mah Jong-type tiles that each have a letter of the English alphabet on the front. [The set could be used for any language that uses the Latin alphabet.] The game is set up and played like traditional Mah Jong: each player starts with a hand of 16 tiles; a turn consists of drawing a tile and discarding a tile; you can claim the recent discard if it helps you meld; you go out if you can meld all 17 tiles -- your hand and the tile you just drew.
The difference is that the melds are not sets and runs, but valid words of 2 or more letters each. When one player goes out, each player scores 1 point per letter in the valid words they can make. The winner (the one who went out) thus gets 17 points, but they also get 1 point per letter in their longest word. This bonus can be multiplied:
Clean Out: If the winner never drew a discard tile, their bonus is doubled.
Fast Out: If the winner goes out with the first drawn tile, their bonus is times five.
Sentence: If the winner's words make a valid sentence, their bonus is times ten. (In this case, the words "I" and "a" are allowed.)
The winner is the player with the highest score after an agreed number of rounds, or the first to reach a target score.
Ten vowel tiles have small B on them, indicating they are Bound and must be played next to another vowel within their word.
If desired, a round's words can be limited to a certain part of speech (e.g. noun, verb, adjective), or a certain theme (e.g. sports, movies).
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