Madison Row

A dice game for one phone and a table full of people

The dice are arranged, and the guide says what to write and why.

  1. 1 Shake or tap to roll four dice
  2. 2 Write two of them on your rows
  3. 3 Ring a bell by reaching six

2 to 5 players. About 15 minutes.

Who is playing

How many players

Names are ready to go. Change them if you like.

How the rows score

Pass the phone to

—

Nobody else needs to see this sheet.

— 0
Silence 10 points each

Your roll

The last peal

The rules

Madison Row is for 2 to 5 players on one device. It takes about 15 minutes.

Madison Row is a little street with four bell towers on it: Sun, Rose, Fern and Dusk. You each have your own. Under every bell is a row of six places.

Your turn, in three steps

  1. Echo. The four dice the last player rolled are still on the table. You may write one of them.
  2. Roll. Shake the phone, or tap the roll button. Four fresh dice.
  3. Write two. Take two of those four dice and write them on your rows.

Where a number may go

  • An empty row will take any number.
  • After that, each number must be exactly one more than the number above it. A row might read 2, 3, 4, 5.
  • A row never skips and never goes back down.

Ringing a bell

Write a 6 on a row and the bell rings. A rung bell is finished for the rest of the game, and it is worth double. So a long row you manage to finish is worth a great deal, and a row that never reaches 6 is worth much less than it might have been.

Silence

If you write nothing at all from your own roll, mark a Silence. Each Silence costs 10 points. The echo does not count here — it is only about your own four dice.

Scoring

What one row is worth, playing Big swings
Numbers in the row123456
Still open
Rung
  • Add up your four rows.
  • Ring all four bells and add 25 for a full peal.
  • Take away 10 for each Silence.

How the game ends

The moment somebody rings all four bells, or marks a fourth Silence, the round is played out so that everyone has had the same number of turns. Then the game ends and the highest score wins.

A small piece of advice

Starting a row on a 1 gives you room for a very long row, but you need every number after it. Starting on a 4 is safer and smaller. Deciding when to settle is most of the game.

About Madison Row

Madison Row is made by MakeJoy Labs, a nonprofit that builds free software for children and families.

  • No account, ever.
  • No adverts and nothing to buy.
  • No network. The whole game is one file on your device, and it never sends anything anywhere.
  • Names and scores are saved only on this device, and only for the game in progress.
  • No streaks, no daily rewards, no unlockables. It is just a game.

Madison Row is an original game. The rules, the scoring, the bells and the look were designed for MakeJoy Labs. It belongs to the wide family of roll-and-write dice games, the way most card games share a deck.

The name is a street. Four bell towers stand along it, and on a good evening all four of them ring. It is named for Madison Isbell Valdez, who taught the founder that a good game is worth an evening.

For Madison, who knows the best games happen around a table.

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