Wiggly Worms Board Game: Rules for How to Play

Objective

The objective of Wiggly Worms is to be the first player to find worms that match all of your cards.

Setup

Each player chooses a color and takes all five worm cards of the color they chose. Place the cards face up in front of yourself.
Randomly place one worm in each hole in the game base with the color side on the bottom. Place the game base in the middle of the table where everyone can reach it.
The game does not say who starts the game.

How to Play Wiggly Worms

To begin your turn you will slide the lever all of the way back. Then let go to start the timer and activate the game base. The worms will move up and down.

Grab a worm, pull it out, and look at the tail. You can only take one worm at a time. If the tail’s color matches one of your worm cards, keep the worm and place it on the corresponding worm card in front of you.

Finding a matching worm — This player is looking for green worms. The worm’s tail is green, so this player has found a match. They will keep the worm and place it on top of one of their cards.

If the worm does not match one of your cards, you will show it to the rest of the players. Then place it back into the hole you took it out of.

Picking a worm that is not a match — This worm has a blue tail. It does not match the player’s green cards. They will return the worm to the apple.

You will keep taking worms hoping to find ones that match your cards/color. You can keep grabbing worms until the timer runs out. Play then passes to the player on your left.

Winning Wiggly Worms

The game ends when someone places a matching worm on each of their worm cards. The first player to find all of the matching worms, wins the game.

Alternative Modes

There are two different alternative ways that you can play Wiggly Worms.

In the normal game the players take turns trying to find matching worms. You can instead play the game where all of the players play at the same time. One of the players slides the lever. When they release it, all of the players can grab worms at the same time. Each player can only take one worm at a time. When the timer runs out, a different player slides the lever to start the timer again. The first player to place a matching worm on each of their cards wins the game.

Normally each player is assigned their own color in Wiggly Worms. You can instead shuffle all of the cards and randomly deal cards to each player. Each player should get the same number of cards. If there are extra cards, they won’t be used in the game. In this variant game, each player has to try and find worms that match the colors on the cards that they were dealt. The first player to find a match for each of their cards, wins the game.

Wiggly Worms FAQ

If you have any questions about how to play the game, leave a comment below on this post. I will try to answer any questions asked as best and as quickly as possible.

Components

Apple Game Base
20 Worms
20 Worm Cards
Instructions

Year: 1991 | Publisher: Goliath, Mattel, Pressman, Peter Pan Playthings | Designer: Gordon A. Barlow

Genres: Children’s, Memory

Ages: 4+ | Number of Players: 2-4 | Length of Game: 10-20 minutes

Difficulty: Light | Strategy: Light | Luck: Moderate

For more board and card game rules/how to plays, check out our complete alphabetical list of card and board game rules posts.

Written By:

Eric Mortensen

Eric Mortensen is an owner and head writer on Geeky Hobbies since 2014. He is an avid board game player and collector with over 3,000 board and card games in his collection. Since 2014 he has written more than 1,100 board game how to play guides.