Prose Bowl is played with a set of 21 letters; the rules suggest choosing the first 21 from some piece of written material. A procedure is given for drafting letters from the set which results in each player having ten. The remaining letter is the "team captain" for both players. The players then have three minutes to make words from their letters; every word must include the captain. Points are awarded based on word length and use of rare letters. A series of three games can be played, in which case the teams are kept but the loser of a game chooses any letter as the new captain for both teams.