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TworDuel™ — The Classic Two-Player Word Deduction Duel

Par Gryphon and Eagle Games

Voir la campagne

BoardGameGeek

Statut actuel

Campagne close Fin de campagne : 03/09/2026

Fonds récoltés : 5 809 €

Deduction

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In 2021, a free daily puzzle called Wordle™ * reminded the whole world of something we'd nearly forgotten — that there are few pleasures as quietly addictive as conjuring up a Secret Word using nothing but logic and a handful of letters. Almost overnight, word games were being played everywhere again: at kitchen tables, on phones, and in group chats from New York to Los Angeles and Sydney to London.

What that wave of new fans never realized is that the kind of word deduction they'd fallen in love with wasn't new at all. It was already more than fifty years old.

TworDuel was created over half a century ago, and in the decades since it has been published by three different companies under three different names. It was a clever, ahead-of-the-curve game in every one of those eras — but it was built for a world that hadn't quite caught up to it yet.

Where today's famous daily puzzle is a solitary race to find one hidden word — right or wrong, and you're done — TworDuel is a head-to-head duel. Two players. Real strategy. You hunt down your opponent's secret word by guessing smaller words hidden inside it, deducing the secret word from these guesses, and scoring points as you close in. It's sharp, it's strategic, it's social, and it folds up small enough to go anywhere, anytime.

*Wordle is a trademark of The New York Times Company. TworDuel is an independent game and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or associated with Wordle or The New York Times.

1. Choose Your Gameword
Your Gameword is the secret word your opponent is trying to discover. You start by writing down a secret 6-letter Gameword. For the optional second round, each player also chooses a 7-letter Gameword.

2. Keep It Secret
Hide your Gameword using the magnetic flap of the Gamesheet holder so your opponent can’t see it.

3. Play Guesswords
Take turns making guesses of shorter Guesswords to gather clues about your opponent's Gameword.

4. Deduce the Gameword
For each Guessword you make, your opponent simply responds with only the number of points you score for that guess (e.g."500" or "1250"). You then use logic and your deductive skills to determine which letters are present and where they belong in the Gameword.

5. Score Points
You are trying to rack up as many points as possible, while simultaneously identifying letter presence and position in your opponent's Gameword.

6. Make Your Final Guess
At the end of the round on the final turn, correctly guess your opponent's secret Gameword to earn bonus points.

7. Compare Scores
Both players receive the same number of turns. The player with the most points wins!

My wife Joanne and I are both from New York and we got married there in 1970. We immediately moved to California. In 1972, 1973, 1974 and 1975, for both business and personal reasons, we made cross-country car trips across the US. Our companion in the car for the four cross-country trips was the game My Word, the 1972 edition, created by Joli Quentin Kansil, published by his company Gamut of Games. Our personal copy is pictured below. Joanne and I have played this game over 1000 times.

For years, we’ve carried lists of 6 and 7 letter words on scraps of paper and backs of business cards in our wallets, to be used to try and stump each other in our frequent play sessions of this game. Without question it is our favorite word game, and one of our all-time favorite games – period (and we have published and played LOTS of games together in the subsequent 56 years since we got married and the 30+ years we have been involved in the boardgames industry).

About the only thing that is different between the My Word game we bought at a Long Island game store in 1972 vs. TworDuel in 2026 is its more up-to-date name and its new packaging with some very minor graphics edits. Joanne and I hope you will give it a try by backing this Kickstarter campaign and finding out why we've been loving it for the past 50+ years.

Rick Soued
FRED Distribution; Gryphon and Eagle Games; and Eagle-Gryphon Games, Inc.
Publisher of TworDuel, a.k.a. My Word and What's My Word?

TworDuel has been published under several names over the last 54 years, but the gameplay, rules, and Gamesheets have remained unchanged. While reviews of TworDuel under that name are not yet available, the positive and favorable reviews and videos presented above and below cover its previous edition, What's My Word?—the very same game enjoyed by players for decades—and they completely and accurately represent TworDuel. Click the highlights below to see the full reviews.

The TworDuel Complete Game includes 1 lightweight box, 2 Gamesheet holders with magnetic flaps to hide the secret Gamewords and provide a hard surface to write on, 2 pads of Gamesheets (40 double-sided pages in each) for 40 plays, and 1 Rules Sheet. The suggested retail is $25. Save 28%.

The TworDuel Group Buy includes a 12-Pack of the TworDuel Complete Game (above). Great for gift-giving to family and friends. Suggested retail is $300. Save 36%!

For Certified Retailers ONLY! 12 TworDuel Complete Games!

Pay $137 and get 11 Complete TworDuel copies for $12.45 each and a free 12th copy to be sold or used as a demo. Suggested Retail price is $300. You save 54%!

TworDuel and Environmental Commitments

TworDuel™ is paper-and-pencil by design — no plastic miniatures, blisters, or trays. For this production, we’ve specified FSC-certified paper stock and soy-based inks throughout, and produced them at Panda Game Manufacturing's fully FSC-certified factory. Reusable Holders and refillable score pads mean you replace a pad, not the whole game. And the under-one-pound box ships in recyclable cartons with a kraft-paper band instead of plastic shrink wrap. We have designed and built TworDuel™ with the environment in mind, and we’re glad to share with you the specific choices behind its publication (please refer to the Environmental Commitments section below).

TworDuel began with a pedigree. My Word! was first published in 1972 by Gamut of Games, Inc., the company Joli Quentin Kansil founded to publish the games he and his design associate Phil Orbanes created — the company's name was a nod to the gaming world that Sid Sackson, the Dean of American game designers, had shaped in his book of the same name.

A decade later the game returned as Zig Zag, a spiral-bound pad published by Xanadu Leisure, the company of its own designer, Joli Quentin Kansil. The image on the right is a Gamesheet completed by Joli Kansil and an opponent.

The game found a new generation as What's My Word?, released as #3 in Gryphon Games' celebrated Two-Player Series.

Designed for portability and life on the road, the Travel Edition (a re-release of What's My Word?) was published in 2017 by Gryphon Games.

Prince Joli Quentin Kansil (1943–2023) was, by any measure, an original — beginning with his name. Born Joel Dennis Gaines in Manhattan, he reinvented himself as Joli Quentin Kansil, choosing initials — J, Q, K — that winked at the Jack, Queen, and King of the card game he so loved, and that ran through both his Bridge writings and his best-known game, Bridgette. He fondly told me himself that the honorific “Prince” came the romantic way: by marriage to a member of the Hawaiian royal family.

Bridge great Oswald Jacoby once called him the best combination game inventor and game player in the world. It was no exaggeration. Kansil invented 36 card, word, board, and dice games and authored several books. His celebrated Bridgette, a two-player version of bridge, also published by Gamut of Games in 1972, earned a place in GAMES Magazine's Hall of Fame, and in 1992 he was named Game Inventor of the Year at the Essen game fair in Germany.

He was, too, a man of the wider world — a teacher in Hawaii, Thailand, Vietnam, and Singapore who traveled to more than 200 countries and territories. He edited the definitive 1999 edition of Hoyle's Official Rules of Card Games and — fittingly for the game you are now considering — wrote crossword puzzles for The New York Times.

I (Rick Soued) first met Joli in 2002. A decade later, in 2012, I visited him at his home in Manila, The Philippines. Between 2005 and 2012, I had acquired the rights to publish several of his games, including My Word, Montage, Solitaire for Two, Krakatoa and Marrakesh. We had struck up a friendship as well as a working relationship by then, and he was concerned about his legacy as a unique and original games designer. Before he passed away in 2023, I had occasion to talk with him about his great word game -- My Word. He was very much aware of the popularity of Wordle by then and specifically asked if I would please consider republishing My Word in an effort to bring attention back to the existence of his 1972 game. We feel strongly that this reincarnation of his game, in the form of TworDuel, is one of his enduring gifts to people who love words. We're proud to publish it again — in honor of the legacy of Prince Joli Quentin Kansil -- and once again to share with you a few more of his creations (mentioned below).

If TworDuel is a two-player duel, Montage is a team sport. A partnership word game invented by Kansil in 1973 — and one I was honored to co-develop in a later version with Joli himself — several game experts consider it the most original of the 36 games he ever designed. The premise is irresistibly clever: there are no letters on the board at all — each colored chip stands for a group of five or six letters, so every word is spelled in color. On your turn you “spell” a secret word in chips, then give a crossword-style clue, hoping your partner cracks it before your opponents do. One reviewer captured its appeal perfectly, calling it a cross between Password, Mastermind, and Scrabble. The respected critics at The Opinionated Gamers have long counted it among Kansil's best word games. Played on a 15×15 grid by four players in two teams, it's a deduction-and-vocabulary contest with real tension — the moment two players both knock, certain they've solved your clue, is pure delight. For word-lovers, TworDuel will be your next two-player affair, and Montage the next group obsession.

Everyone knows Solitaire — but almost no one has played it like this. If you know how to play Solitaire with a deck of cards, you already know how to play Solitaire for Two. Kansil took the world's most familiar card game and gave it company, adding two new suits, three jokers, a scoring system, and the ability to play with two, three, or four players. The box really contains two games in one: Six-Suit Solitaire — a richer solo Klondike version originally released as Indochine 2000 — and Solitaire for Two, where players take turns drawing tiles and racing to score. In the two-player game you compete head-to-head, scoring points as you place and move tiles; the four-player version plays in partnerships. One elegant bonus: the 81 high-quality urea tiles can stand in for an ordinary deck of cards, letting you play countless other games with them too.

When the designer famous for words and cards turned to dice, he made something genuinely unlike anything else on the shelf — one of the most unusual dice games ever released. You roll nine twelve-sided dice, divided into three sets — white, grey, and black, representing steam, ash, and lava — and here's the first surprise: the faces show no numbers at all, only colored dots of yellow, red, or blue. Then comes the eruption. After your opening throw each round, you scoop up one set of dice and hurl them back in, striking the dice still on the table. Part dexterity, part puzzle, all volcano. Precise rolling earns points for color combinations, and certain target scores unlock big bonuses — so it rewards a sharp eye as much as a lucky hand. Fast (about 30 minutes), endlessly re-rollable, and long sought-after as a collector's oddity, Krakatoa is the kind of game people pick up out of curiosity and keep playing out of delight. If your TworDuel duels need a palate-cleanser between word battles, this is it.

For this Kickstarter, we have reduced the Add-On price of Krakatoa to just $6!

Joli Quentin Kansil was the Backgammon editor for GAMES Magazine during the late '70s and early '80s. Kansil was an authority on Backgammon and wrote several books about the game, including Backgammon! and The Backgammon Quiz Book, each shown below.

Marrakesh draws heavily from Kansil's expertise on Backgammon, and virtually all reviews of Marrakesh praise it highly, but very few copies were ever produced of it. In fact, Joli Kansil himself only published a Limited Edition of 500 copies. Yet here is what Kansil had to say about the game:

"In 1974, I thoroughly analyzed bearing off techniques with two, three, and four men left on the board. I became fascinated with this phase of backgammon and thought it would make a wonderful game in and of itself. I decided to use cards instead of dice, but the key rules governing the card play did not strike me until four years later when my wife and I were visiting Marrakesh, Morocco. As with the other games I have marketed, Marrakesh took a bit of inspiration, but much of the game's creation was through rigorous testing and sheer trial and error." Kansil goes on to say:

"In addition to luck and skill, Marrakesh has a third element — ESP: the ability to 'outwit and outguess your opponent,' as Martin Gardner has commented. To further compare, in backgammon you have to contend with the dice, which can be treacherous, as we all know; in Marrakesh, however, special cards are used, and the player always has control over what card he wishes to play, so there is none of the frustration of throwing bad dice. But like backgammon, Marrakesh has big swings and the excitement of being able to come from behind to win. The last two factors should appeal to players who are accustomed to playing for stakes."

Should we publish Marrakesh?

FRED is thinking about publishing an updated limited print run of Marrakesh. In order to do this, we would need to get pre-orders from 500 or more interested buyers. If you would be interested in getting more information about this possibility as it emerges, contact us at: MarrakeshFRED@gmail.com

We will make the limited Add-On stock we have available in our partner warehouse network available in the Kickstarter pledge manager starting in mid-September. Here is a table reflecting what we intend to offer (and where) in the Pledge Manager:

We will calculate shipping costs for all Pledges, including those with Add-Ons, during the Kickstarter Pledge Manager period which will follow this Kickstarter fund-raising campaign. We expect the Pledge Manager to begin in mid-September and run until mid-October

Extra TworDuel Gamesheet Pads are available during the Pledge Manager to Backers of the TworDuel Complete Game

Sets of 2 Gamesheet Pads (one for each player containing 40 double-sided Gamesheets for both the 6-letter and 7-letter rounds of TworDuel), will be available for sale during the Pledge Manager for $6 per set of two pads (good for 40 game plays). If you add one set of 2 Gamesheet Pads ($6) to your Pledge for one copy of the Complete Game of TworDuel ($18) we will ship them to anywhere in the Continental US for FREE! (That is, there will be no additional shipping for the 2 pads.)

Financially, $5,000 is enough to help us get started with the production of TworDuel. Realistically, we would like to get the support of at least 600-800 Backers for this Kickstarter and raise over $10,000. That amount would really help us to meaningfully cover a lot more of the preparation, art, graphics, KS fees and collection fees, FRED company overhead, factory production costs, shipping/tariffs, fulfillment and storage expenses of this project. We plan to sign the contract to produce TworDuel at the Panda Game Manufacturing factory just as soon as we know this Kickstarter will be successful. As mentioned above, the money raised by this Kickstarter is not the reason that we can or will produce this game.

Your support, as Backers of this game, is hugely meaningful to us as potential producers of this game. Without your Backing and encouragement, we would likely not produce it. Boardgame production is a risky business, and while we have always been aware of this and taken many risks in the past, the fact that you believe in this game enough to Back it pre-production and support what we are doing, is the major incentive we have to continue to take on these projects and produce these games. So our very sincere THANKS TO YOU for Backing this game on this Kickstarter.

Based on our prior experience in hosting, funding and fulfilling over 130 successful Kickstarter projects, we believe we are setting realistic expectations. However, while we would like to guarantee them, we simply cannot do that as there are always Risks and Challenges (see below) involved in trying to predict the schedule and progress of even the most simple and straightforward projects -- such as this one proposes to be.

Welcome to our campaign! Backing TworDuel is easy. Follow these simple steps:

Step 1: Choose your Pledge Level

Kickstarter is the first step in the process. Here you can choose the Pledge Level that is right for you. Simply click on the pledge level that you prefer, and then follow the prompts. This reserves (but does not complete) a copy (or more!) of TworDuel for you. You will be able to add additional items to your pledge in the Kickstarter pledge manager, which will open in mid-September.

Step 2: Complete your Pledge in the pledge manager

Using our Kickstarter pledge manager, you will be able to add additional items to your pledge (if you want to), enter your shipping address, and complete the checkout process. It is in the pledge manager that you will pay for the shipping fees and any applicable taxes for your region. You must complete your pledge in the pledge manager, or else we won’t know where to ship your game!

Step 3: We Produce and Deliver Your Game to You

If our Kickstarter is successful--as we'll know by or before September 4--we'll start production as soon as possible. The pledge manager itself will close in mid-October. Once the pledge manager closes, we export your pledge information as well as your shipping information to the appropriate fulfillment center. Once production is complete, the games will ship from our factory to our regional fulfillment centers around the world. Once there, they will be packaged and shipped out to you!

February, 2027 is our best guess (as of this writing in July, 2026) as to when you will receive your game via our fulfillment channels. We will be ready to have the game produced within 30 days of the end of this Kickstarter. Panda Game Manufacturing is one of the very best production factories for games in China. As such, they are very busy at this time of year and their production queue can be as long as 90 to 120 days. Winter weather frequently delays shipping at the time of year when this game will be ready to ship and be fulfilled. Like I said, February, 2027 is our best guess, but we might be able to get the game to you as much as a month earlier or (hopefully), no more than a month later. This is largely dependent on issues not within our control, but we will do our best.

During the entire process, we will send out periodic updates and reminders about deadlines. If you ever have any questions about your pledge, the best way to contact us is to email us at TworDuel@gmail.com.

This first edition of TworDuel will be produced only in the English language. If any of our international partners who have worked with us in the past on other games are interested, we will welcome them to join us in future print runs of TworDuel to produce other language versions. For this run, we expect a significant majority of the sales to be to US-based backers and have planned accordingly. That's why we have concentrated on only one version of the game, with minimal packaging and size and weight (approximately one pound or less per game). We hope this will minimize shipping expense and maximize efficiency (see the Shipping & Fulfillment section below), since most of the fulfillment will be done by our own Kentucky, US-based warehouse. We will also ship copies of this English version to our partner warehouses in Canada (Board Game Bliss, Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada); the EU (Marvel Services, Böblingen, Germany); the UK (Spiral Galaxy Games, Ltd., Telford, UK); Australia/New Zealand (VR Distribution, Adelaide, Australia); and Asia (VFI Asia, Xiamen, China) to fulfill pledges from Kickstarter Backers and retailers in those countries/regions.

We love working with retail backers and have created a Pledge Level to be able to do so for TworDuel. We will only package TworDuel in cartons of 12 at our Chinese factory. This will expedite our container shipping out of China and our fulfillment to retailers in increments of the 12-pack cartons as called for in two of the four Pledge Levels.

We believe that TworDuel will have appeal to a very wide audience including not only games stores, but also retail drug stores, grocery stores, gift stores and general goods stores. Why not consider buying a 12-pack of TworDuel for yourself and for giving a unique and thoughtful gift to your word-loving and Wordle-loving friends for the holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, etc.?

By pledging to this project, you acknowledge that the final look, materials, and content of the rewards (and the project) are subject to change and may differ from what is presented while this Kickstarter campaign is active. All artwork is subject to change. These terms and conditions apply specifically to this project.

NOTE: If you are pledging from within the EU or UK, you will be assessed VAT as required by your country in the post-campaign pledge manager. Backers within the United States will be charged sales tax in states where we have met the required sales threshold.

Refund Policy

All pledges can be refunded in full up to 13 days after the end of the Kickstarter campaign. In addition, if any part of your order cannot be delivered, we will reimburse you for the full cost of this component of your order, regardless of the date. If you apply for a refund more than 13 days after the end of the Kickstarter, we will only be able to refund 80% of your pledge. The difference is the amount of the unrecoverable costs and fees paid to process your order through Kickstarter, credit card processing, and the pledge manager.

NOTE: The 80% option only applies until these games ship from China. Once the games have shipped from China towards our fulfillment centers, refunds will no longer be available. Any purchases made in the post-campaign pledge manager are also subject to this refund policy.

Once the campaign concludes, if fully funded, we will launch a post-campaign pledge manager to collect your shipping information, your shipping fees for your pledge, and for you to purchase any additional add-ons out of those available. The pledge manager will launch on Kickstarter on or near September 15th.

We fulfill through regional, contractual partners in the United States, Canada, the EU, the UK, Australia/New Zealand and Asia, and we can ship to most countries those partners serve. We are unable to ship to Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Afghanistan and we can't reliably deliver to destinations outside our partner network--currently including Africa and South America. If your country isn't covered in the chart below, please email us at TworDuel@gmail.com before pledging.

We want to be candid about why we're offering our best estimates rather than ironclad promises this far ahead. World events being what they are, volatile currency-exchange fluctuations, and rapidly changing postage fees and import tariffs all make long-range shipping estimates genuinely challenging. The closer we get to fulfillment, the more accurately we can pin these numbers down — so waiting until the pledge manager isn't a delay tactic, it's what lets us give everyone the truest, fairest figure possible instead of a guess we'd only have to revise. We appreciate your patience and trust, and we promise to keep shipping as honest and reasonable as we possibly can. In some cases we can arrange a special shipment if necessary. In other cases the Backer may need to assume the delivery risk. Based on prior experience, we collect the shipping fees for your pledge during that post-campaign pledge manager period. We believe this is the fairest and best approach for both you as a backer and us as the publisher.

Shipping fees are calculated based on the shipping weight and dimensions of the total pledge. Please keep in mind that the shipping fees quoted below do not include simply postage. This is commonly misunderstood. While postage is a significant component, these fees also include handling the freight arriving at the warehouse, as well as the packaging materials and labor involved in sending out these packages to you from these independently-owned and operated warehouses we contract with for fulfillment. We cannot always estimate accurately, in advance, the shipping expense to various locations. Because we may be shipping this game out on many different containers to these destinations, it is also impossible to predict the dates when these warehouses will receive and fulfill these games to you. Please be tolerant and patient with regard to these differences as the only prediction we can make about fulfillment dates from one region to another is that, at times, they will be unpredictable!

So what do we mean by ✱✱? Shipping will be quoted individually during the Kickstarter pledge manager (mid-Sept. to mid-Oct. 2026). For anything marked ✱✱, we'll ask exactly what you want to buy and where you want it sent. Then we’ll confirm your actual cost with you before you're asked to pay. That way there are no surprises for either one of us.