In Quills, players use letter cards to form the best word – that is, the one worth the most prestige points – that they can. The words are critiqued, with the fewest critiques going to the most prestigious word. After ten rounds, the player with the fewest critiques wins.

If you can't make a long word, you can instead try to make one that ends in a string of cards of the same suit (a "meld"). Because the game combines word-forming skills with other pattern formation, a player's obscure vocabulary will help but not guarantee a win against players with more conventional vocabularies (but an eye for long melds).