Description

From the rules:

Alphabid is the game of crosswords. Using identical sets of color-coded letters, two players match vocabularies by drawing, bidding and playing, crossword style, as many letters per word as possible. As the grid fills up, the players may begin to risk their turns in an effort to make longer words than the opponent. The final outcome remains undetermined until a player has drawn the last letter and the opponent cannot catch up.

Description:

Alphabid is played on an 18x18 square grid. As indicated by the description in the rules, each player has an identical set of tiles. However, each starts off with a random selection of eight of these. After the first turn, a player must start their turn by "bidding" the number of tiles they think they can play; this entitles them to draw that many tiles, after which they can raise their bid in order to draw more tiles. After they have bid as high as they want (or they have eight tiles, which is the maximum) they must play at least as many letters as they bid. If a player plays eight tiles on a turn they draw eight more without having to bid.

Play follows standard Scrabble rules: words are played left-to-right or top-to-bottom and all orthogonally adjacent letters must form words.

Plays do not score points. Instead, the object is to draw all of one's tiles. If both players manage to do this on the same turn, the player who has the fewest tiles left wins.