Illiterati

Once the countdown has started, players can talk and exchange letters as much as they like with each other and with the library in an attempt to reach their goal. Once the time is up, if the library contains too many letters - and this threshold is based on your difficulty level - you trigger a burn event. Turn all these letters face-down, remove one of them from the game, then discard the excess letters into the discard bag. If you burn too many letters, you lose the game. If you haven't burnt any letters and you've reached your objective, turn your red book face-down and draw a blue waterlogged book to give you a new objective.

At the end of the round, draw an Illiterate Villain card and resolve its effect. If you've already drawn this villain - and the deck contains five copies of five villains - then all that villain's previous effects are also resolved in a chain attack from newest to oldest. Villain attacks often remove letters from words, which means you'll have to create new words with what's left on the next turn to avoid burning another letter.

Once all players have completed two books - or three or four, depending on your difficulty level - draw an additional book, the final chapter, and all players must complete this challenge in the same turn, for example by using 12 or more tiles to create words in which all vowels are the same color. If all players achieve this goal in the same turn, you win; if just one player fails, another villain attacks, then you draw new tiles to start a new turn. You can discard and draw up to seven tiles again at the start of a turn, but you must draw a second Illiterate Villain card during that turn - and if the Villain deck is exhausted, you lose.