The Olelo deck has 100 letter cards and 3 wild cards. The game plays like Texas Hold 'Em poker without bidding or betting. Players try to make the highest-scoring word using letters from their hand and/or the community cards (called the Circus) on the table.
In each hand, all players are dealt 2 cards, and there are 3 rounds:
a) 3 cards are dealt to the Circus (the Drop)
b) a 4th card is dealt to the Circus (the Joey)
c) a 5th card is dealt (the Ringer)
In each round, after the cards are added to the Circus each player may choose to discard one of their cards and get dealt a new one.
After the third round each player shows their hand and announces the word they are making. The player with the highest-scoring word adds its score to their total; any tied players all add their scores. The first player to 50 or 100 points wins the game.
There is an Easy Play version for younger players, with these differences:
The deck is split into a vowels deck and a consonants deck.
Players' hand cards come from the consonants deck.
The rounds are: a) the Circus starts with one vowel; b) the Circus gets a second vowel; c) (optional) the Circus gets a consonant.
The player(s) with the highest scoring word each get 1 point. The first player to 5 or 10 points wins the game.
The name "Olelo" was chosen because it is Hawaiian for "spoken words", and it's a palindrome.