Fit to Print

Lay out a newspaper against the clock: grab stories, then fit them onto the page before the deadline.

The goal

Print three days of papers (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) and score the most across them.

1Each day is timed, four minutes as standard. Everyone plays at once; there are no turns.
2Reporting: take one tile at a time from the middle and flip it. Keep it on your desk or put it back face up. When you have enough, call “Layout!” and you can take no more.
3Layout: fit the tiles you kept onto your page. No rotating, and the centrepiece must cover the star. Articles of the same colour can't touch, photos can't touch photos, and ads can't touch ads.
4When you are done call “Print!” and take the next finishing token. The day ends when time runs out or everyone has printed.
5Scoring: articles score their printed number; a photo scores 1 for each matching article beside it; an imbalance of happy and sad news loses points; each tile you couldn't place loses 1; the least white space earns 3.

After three days, the one player with the lowest ad revenue is out of the running, and the highest score among the rest wins.

Tiles you can't place cost points. Take fewer rather than more.
Ads score nothing, but the lowest revenue knocks you out. Place one or two every day.
Place the big tiles first and keep small ones to fill the gaps.