For the record, the Meeple Guilder penning this review has been a journalist for nearly four decades, which might lead one to assume I would be good at—and a fan of—word games.
That assumption would be grossly inaccurate.
Now, I do not hate word games, but I certainly am not good at them—despite winning the last game of Scrabble the Guild played as part of Scrabble Day. As the granddaddy of word games, I more or less tolerate Scrabble, though I’m not a fan of obscure two-letter words or the race to high-scoring squares on the board.
I find Upwords much more enjoyable, although my better half often beats me at it, and she absolutely tromps me in Boggle, a game I avoid more than COVID.
Then Yoink! arrived from the publisher, Two Cheeks Gaming.
Yoink!, as you might have already surmised, is a word game—although not actually a board game, in the sense that there is no board. In this one, letter tiles go face down into the center of the table. Players then take turns turning a single tile face up. When a player sees a word among the letters that is at least four letters long, they shout it out. Be first and collect the word.
Words are placed in front of players and can be added to—so present might become presenters, for example. If it is another player who creates the new word, they “steal” it. The trick is that you must use all of the letters in the original word, and at least one new letter from among those face up.
At the end of the game, you count up the letters in the words you have; the one with the most wins.
The game says it plays two-plus, but it probably maxes out at four or five players, so everyone is close enough to easily spot words you might “steal.”
Yoink! is a game that feels like it should have been created ages ago.
“I am not sure I can identify a core idea, but I wanted to create a timeless game—one that is easy to learn but very difficult to master, and one that fixed some of the deficiencies of other word games I have known and loved,” explained Jacob Mayer, founder of the publisher, via email. “There aren’t many word games that are zero-sum, where anything good for one player is necessarily bad for the others, so that was part of the goal as well.
“I love words and word games, but the classics of the genre have all these features that drove me nuts. Basically, I was trying to fix those. The first and primary one was that Yoink! is interactive—you’re not playing in your own little world simultaneously with the other players. You are playing against them. There’s a push and pull that means you really feel the clash. I also wanted a word game that genuinely rewarded a good vocabulary. Not only are there no arbitrary word-size limits in Yoink!, but there’s no practical or strategic limit either. Longer words are always better.”
Ultimately, Yoink! is another word game I quickly discovered I am not good at—but darned if I didn’t really enjoy the experience. This one easily slides to the top of my list as my favorite word game. Sorry, Upwords, but the interactive nature wins out.
Simplicity, a modicum of cutthroat action, and a fun exploration of words combine to make this one rank very high among games first played in 2025 to date.
About Author
Calvin Daniels is a Saskatchewan-born, self-taught journalist. He is currently Editor of Yorkton This Week, with 35-years in the newspaper business.
Word games do not get better than Yoink!
That assumption would be grossly inaccurate.
Now, I do not hate word games, but I certainly am not good at them—despite winning the last game of Scrabble the Guild played as part of Scrabble Day. As the granddaddy of word games, I more or less tolerate Scrabble, though I’m not a fan of obscure two-letter words or the race to high-scoring squares on the board.
I find Upwords much more enjoyable, although my better half often beats me at it, and she absolutely tromps me in Boggle, a game I avoid more than COVID.
Then Yoink! arrived from the publisher, Two Cheeks Gaming.
Yoink!, as you might have already surmised, is a word game—although not actually a board game, in the sense that there is no board. In this one, letter tiles go face down into the center of the table. Players then take turns turning a single tile face up. When a player sees a word among the letters that is at least four letters long, they shout it out. Be first and collect the word.
Words are placed in front of players and can be added to—so present might become presenters, for example. If it is another player who creates the new word, they “steal” it. The trick is that you must use all of the letters in the original word, and at least one new letter from among those face up.
At the end of the game, you count up the letters in the words you have; the one with the most wins.
The game says it plays two-plus, but it probably maxes out at four or five players, so everyone is close enough to easily spot words you might “steal.”
Yoink! is a game that feels like it should have been created ages ago.
“I am not sure I can identify a core idea, but I wanted to create a timeless game—one that is easy to learn but very difficult to master, and one that fixed some of the deficiencies of other word games I have known and loved,” explained Jacob Mayer, founder of the publisher, via email. “There aren’t many word games that are zero-sum, where anything good for one player is necessarily bad for the others, so that was part of the goal as well.
“I love words and word games, but the classics of the genre have all these features that drove me nuts. Basically, I was trying to fix those. The first and primary one was that Yoink! is interactive—you’re not playing in your own little world simultaneously with the other players. You are playing against them. There’s a push and pull that means you really feel the clash. I also wanted a word game that genuinely rewarded a good vocabulary. Not only are there no arbitrary word-size limits in Yoink!, but there’s no practical or strategic limit either. Longer words are always better.”
Ultimately, Yoink! is another word game I quickly discovered I am not good at—but darned if I didn’t really enjoy the experience. This one easily slides to the top of my list as my favorite word game. Sorry, Upwords, but the interactive nature wins out.
Simplicity, a modicum of cutthroat action, and a fun exploration of words combine to make this one rank very high among games first played in 2025 to date.
About Author
Calvin Daniels
Calvin Daniels is a Saskatchewan-born, self-taught journalist. He is currently Editor of Yorkton This Week, with 35-years in the newspaper business.
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