Maranga

As I waltz my way around the chaotic orbits of HappySkunk, WebSmith, and Maranginator, I’m getting an ever-clearer picture of how each of the systems will work with the others. One of the keys will be to design an attractive promo card for each day’s challenge; something that carries the necessary details, encourages people to share them, and gets full value from that sharing, if it happens.

The goal of Maranga is simple enough: Take a bag of 100 random letters and organize them into real words until you’ve used them all. Sounds simple, right? But “simple” is not the same as “easy,” and beginners will find plenty of challenges just getting the bag emptied.

What are those challenges? First, you only get 7 tiles at a time, so your options are limited. As the game progresses, you’ll have more tiles to work with, but those early moves can be tricky, depending on which letters come out first.