Play your tiles on the clearing to form words that cross one another, make the bonus squares work for you, and score more points than the other players.
Lexio is played by two to four players, each playing for themselves. Taking turns, players place tiles on a shared board, the clearing, to form words that cross one another; every word formed scores points.
The game is played in one go, not in rounds, and the player with the most points at the end wins.
The bag holds one hundred and two tiles, in the French distribution: one hundred letters, covering the twenty-six letters of the alphabet without accents, and two blanks. The E comes in fourteen copies; the letters worth eight or ten points have only one copy each.
E, A, I, S, N, R, T, U, L and O are worth one point; D, C, M and P, two points; G and B, three points; V, F and H, four points; Q, J and X, eight points; Y, K, W and Z, ten points. A blank is worth zero points.
Everyone draws seven tiles and keeps them on their rack. The table sees how many tiles each player holds and how many are left in the bag, never which ones.
The clearing is a thirteen-by-thirteen grid whose corners are walled off, sixteen squares in all: that leaves one hundred and fifty-three playable squares, forming an octagon. A word stops at the wall just as it does at the edge of the board.
In the middle, the source must be covered by the first word; it doesn’t multiply anything. Thirty-six bonus squares surround it: eight letter ×2 squares, eight letter ×3, eight word ×2, eight word ×3 and four crossings. The word bonuses are on the edge, the letter bonuses inside, and no bonus square touches another along a side.
The first player to arrive at the table opens the game, then turns follow the order of arrival. On your turn, you do just one thing: play tiles, swap, or pass.
Everything is recorded in the game log, which the whole table can read back: words played, points, swaps and passes.
You place one to seven tiles in a single row or a single column, with no empty square between them — tiles already on the board can fill the gap. The first word must cover the source; after that, every play must touch at least one tile already on the board.
Your play forms your word, plus every word that one of your tiles creates with its neighbors. Every word is at least two tiles long, and reads in the reading direction along a row, from top to bottom along a column.
A blank names the letter it stands for when it is played, and keeps that letter until the end. Once your play is accepted, your rack is refilled from the bag, as long as the bag still has tiles.
A word is valid if it appears in the table’s word list: the list of words loaded by the site’s server. For now, every table plays in French, whatever language the interface is in, and without accents: the words you play are French words, and “été”, French for “summer”, is played E, T, E.
Every word in your play is checked when you submit it, including the words formed crosswise. If any of them is missing from the word list, the play doesn’t go through, the screen names each rejected word, and it is still your turn: a rejection costs neither points nor your turn, but the clock keeps running. So there is nothing to challenge.
So that nobody can probe the word list by trial and error, each player has a reserve of ten plays rejected for an unknown word, which gets one try back every fifteen seconds; an accepted play gives none back. With no tries left, their plays are rejected, even valid ones; swapping and passing remain possible.
Each word formed scores the sum of its tiles’ values. A letter ×2 or ×3 square multiplies the value of the tile played on it; a word ×2 or ×3 square multiplies the whole word, and two of these squares in the same word multiply each other. A blank is worth zero, even on a letter square, but a word square under it does multiply the word.
A bonus pays only on the play that covers its square. The crossing doubles both words running through it, but only if the tile played on it is used in two words of that play at once. The first word of the game reaches no square that pays.
A play that places seven tiles scores thirty extra points, added after the multiplications. The screen shows what your play would be worth before you submit it; that figure doesn’t promise that the play will be accepted, either for its shape or for its words.
Swapping means returning anything from one tile to your whole rack to the bag, in exchange for as many tiles drawn. You draw first, then the bag is mixed again with the returned tiles: you never draw back the ones you have just returned. The bag must hold at least as many tiles as you return.
Passing is always allowed, even when you could play. Neither one scores anything, and both end your turn; the table sees how many tiles you swap, never which ones.
Each turn has a time limit, which the screen counts down. Once that time is up, the table passes for you; it never looks for a word in your place.
A disconnected player keeps their seat and their rack, but the table waits only a few seconds for them on their turn; reconnecting doesn’t give back the lost time.
The game stops when a player plays their last tile while the bag is empty: everyone loses the value of the tiles they still hold, and the player who finished also takes the total of what the others are holding.
It also stops after two rounds of the table without a single play: everyone likewise loses the value of their tiles, but nobody takes anything. A blank still on your rack costs nothing, and a score can go negative.
The highest score wins; in a tie, the win is shared, with no tiebreak. All the racks are then turned face up.