Illiterati is a real-time, cooperative word game where players work together to form words and bind books. Each player starts the game with five letter tiles and a red burnt book that shows a condition that player must fulfill to recover that book, for example, using 8+ tiles with at least 3 green symbols, creating words that are all animals, and so forth. A library of three random tiles is placed in the center of the table. The game takes place in three-minute rounds and before the round starts, each player draws seven letter tiles from the draw bag.

Once the countdown starts, players can talk and trade letters as much as they want with each other and the library to try to achieve their goal. Once the time is up, if the library contains too many letters you will trigger a burn event. Turn all these letters over, remove one from the game and throw any excess letters into the discard bag. If you burn too many letters, you lose the game. If you haven't burned any letters and you've achieved your goal, turn over your red book and pull out a blue soaked book to give yourself a new goal.

At the end of the round, you draw an Illiterati Villain card and resolve its effect. If you previously drew this rogue - and the deck contains five copies of five rogues - then all previous effects of this rogue also resolve into a chain attack. Rogue attacks often strip letters from words, meaning you have to create new words with what's left during the next round to avoid burning another letter.

Once all players have completed two books - or three or four, depending on your difficulty level - you draw another book, the Final Chapter, with all players having to complete this challenge in the same round, for example by using 12+ tiles and creating words in which all your vowels are the same color. If all players complete this goal in the same round, you win; if even one person fails, another villain attacks and you draw new tiles to start a new round. You can discard up to seven tiles at the start of a round and draw again, but you must draw a second Illiterati Villain card that round - and if the Villain deck runs out, you lose.