The Exploding Words deck has 69 letter cards and 1 rules card. Each vowel has 3 normal cards, 1 double word score card, and 1 Kaboom card.
Each player is dealt a 7-card hand, and then over 5 rounds, players draw a card then discard a card, trying to have the best words to play. After 5 rounds players in turn lay down the word(s) from their hand.
Kaboom cards cannot be discarded, and they blow up any word they are in, giving it no score. A Kaboom card can be played in one of your words, blowing it up but leaving the other words okay, or you can keep it in hand and play it on top of an identical letter in a word someone else plays after you. If you don't play a Kaboom in any word, yours or someone else's, your whole hand explodes and you get 0 points that hand. 7-letter words are immune to explosion.
After all words are revealed and exploded, players score for their remaining words and another hand is played. The first player who gets a total score of 100 or more wins the game.