Dingbats (formerly known as Whatzit?)

Dingbats is a fantastic game for players who love visual, word-based puzzles.

Pros

Cons

Quick, what does "lilatefe" mean?

If you answered, "late in life" (li - late - fe, get it?) then Whatzit? is a game for you.

Billed as "the game of batty wordplay," Dingbats tests players' abilities to solve visual puzzles. To begin, 12 cards (four Thingbats, four Dingbats and four Kingbats) are placed in a plastic tray, puzzle side up.

On a turn, you attempt to solve one or more of the puzzles, earning points for each success. A cool electronic timer limits you to 30 seconds (tick-tocking the entire time) per puzzle. A nice wrinkle is that when a puzzle is solved, players can only move to a new puzzle which is pointed to by arrows beneath the solved puzzle card. This adds a level of tactical, if not strategic, thinking to Dingbats, published by Warren Games.

When a player guesses incorrectly, a new puzzle card is added on top of the one which was not solved. (Numerous cards can be stacked in this way.) A player must only solve the top card to win every card in these "jackpot" piles.

When a set is completed (all 12 spaces in the tray are empty), scores are calculated -- Thingbats worth 5 points each, Dingbast 10, and Kingbats 15. So a second tactical decision is whether to go for the more difficult, higher-scoring cards or the simpler, lower-scoring cards on each turn.

The components are nice, comparable to any good American party game, and should last a long time. The bottom line is that if you can decipher "BED FA ST" to be "bed and breakfast," then you'll like Dingbats.