Word Games

An old favorite when my kids were in their teens is Balderdash. it is played with cards that contain unfamiliar words and the players must guess meanings. Players can also the invent words and the opponents must guess if they are real words or not.

each player has a paper and pencil and an eggtimer. write the 26 letters of the alphabet down the left margin of the paper. pick up a book or magazine or newspaper and then randomly read any sentence or phrase. write the first 26 letters of this sentence or phrase next to the alphabet. now you have 26 sets of initials. write a name next to each set of initials. the player with the most legitimate names when the timer runs out is the winner. some excpetions: q counts for queen, p for prince, etc., such that queen elizabeth is a legitimate name for qe.

There is another game called UpWords it is similar to Scrabble, but it has several differences. That is why it is called UpWords instead of Scrabble. There is also Boggle Throw the dice, you get that many time toss the letters. Then you are timed to make as many words you can out of the letters that are tossed out.

Don't forget the ever-popular Scrabble. Yahoo has an online version; you can either pay a monthly subscription or purchase the game outright. My favorite word game is Word Slinger from Yahoo. It's a cross between Scrabble and a Crossword puzzle. Wonderful!

One great website is www.crickler.com

It has some great words games.

Try Yahoo Games. They have some excellent word games.

Try Yahoo Games. They have some excellent word games.

This is in reply to Interesting Game which involves Wordplay. In this 2 Player Game, One imagines a 3,4 or a 5 Letter Word (other than Proper Noun) found in dictionary and informs the other to start guessing the hidden Word. Based on the answers, he keeps guiding with Clues as Before / After till the Hidden Word is found. Example, If the Word Imagined in STOP and the first Guess is LUCK, the Clue to be given is AFTER as STOP comes after LUCK in the dictionary. This eliminates all future guesses of Words before L. So, when the next Guess is TIME, the Clue to be given is BEFORE. If the next guess is SURE then also, the Clue is BEFORE as per dictionary. With Good Vocabulary and Logical Thinking, a 4 Letter or 5 Letter Word can be easily found within 20 attempts. The Trick is to first arrive at the First Letter of the Word and then try out for other Letters.

We used to play this in the car, to keep from getting bored, when we went on family drives:

Jotto -- From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jotto (sometimes Giotto{pol: Dżiotto}) is a logic-oriented word game played with two players, a writing implement, and a piece of paper. Each player picks a secret word of five letters (that is in the dictionary, generally no proper nouns are allowed, and generally consisting of all different letters), and the object of the game is to correctly guess the other player's word first. Players take turns guessing and giving the number of Jots, or the number of letters that are in both the guessed word and the secret word. The positions of the letters don't matter: for example, if the secret word is OTHER and a player guesses PEACH, he gets a reply of 2 (for the E and the H, even though they're in the wrong positions). Using a written-out alphabet, players cross out letters that are eliminated with Jot counts of 0 and other logical deductions.

(We started out with 3 letters, to get the hang of it, and then progressed to larger words.)

Which you can get from www.wordzap.com , there's a free version which you play solitaire style (user - v- pc) and there's a paid for version which allows you to play against other users.

My family used to have an edition of Password. Since it's back on tv, perhaps you can find it for sale again.

That is a favorite word game in my family. Also, if you have a group of people to play with you might enjoy Balderdash. It gets your mind thinking and also provides some laughs.