The idea is good. Bidding for right to play first adds a strategic element. We had trouble forming words the first few times we played with two people. If we're playing correctly (the rules are not that long), we had trouble for two reasons. 1) Once the letters are dealt out initially, you are limited to those letters. So if you need a 'P' to continue a long word and there are no 'P's dealt out, you're out of luck - that word cannot continue. 2) We were always running out of vowels. When a word got scrapped we'd toss out a vowel and pick up 3 consonants. And it kept getting worse. Eventually we'd end up with just a Q Z V and X on the board with a GWJ in our hand. Maybe this is the challenge (GZ zigzag), but it got old in a hurry. Then we started conserving our vowels at all costs and it improved a bit, but it still needs more vowels.

I think we're going to try some house rules - like when you pick up the letters, you can exchange any or all of them for a random card(s) from the unused pile. That way we can bring some new letters into the game and get rid of those nasty ones - unless for some reason we think it would be to our advantage.

Small package is appreciated - there's still room in the game cabinet for this one.