Vie: The Wordplay's the Thing

When scientists found a granite slab at the Malibu Archeological Dig with a single ancient alphabet character on it, they were puzzled. Soon they uncovered another slab and another and another. Some slabs were identical. Most slabs contained several characters. Fifty-four slabs were found in all. Experts were stumped. Word of this curiosity reached the recreational laboratories at Victory Point Games. Professionals here immediately recognized what the archeologists had found: a word game. Perhaps they had found the first crossword game ever devised. You now hold what we believe is the word game cave people used to play, which we've come to call Vie. The original rules to this game have been lost to antiquity. This version should be more manageable than the original version of the game. (After all, granite is so hard to shuffle.) At the start of the game, nine starting cards — each with a single letter on them — are laid out in a 3x3 grid. Each turn, you place a new card over an existing card to try to create new words, scoring them based upon the number of letters on the cards that you use to make those words. (Each square card in the draw deck has letters or letter combinations on 1-4 sides. On your turn, you can either choose one of the face-up cards on display or draw the top card of the deck.) You can score multiple words with the same card play — and you score for all letters on a card used in your word, not only the particular letter or letters used — so landing the best-scoring opportunities requires some strategic planning. Play continues for a number of rounds that decreases with more players.