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Word games and puzzles are spoken or board games often designed to test ability with language or to explore its properties.

Word games are generally engaged as a source of entertainment, but have been found to serve an educational purpose as well. For instance, young children can find enjoyment playing modestly competitive games such as Hangman, while naturally developing important language skills like spelling. Solving crossword puzzles, which requires familiarity with a larger vocabulary, is a pastime that mature adults have long credited with keeping their minds sharp.

There are popular televised word games with valuable monetary prizes for the winning contestants. Many word games enjoy international popularity across a multitude of languages, whilst some are unique to English-speakers.

[edit] Language-predicated educational games

A word game or word puzzle can be of several different types:

[edit] Letter arrangement games

Typdom, a word game from the 1930's

The goal is to form words out of given letters.

• 5 To Close - a team card game
• Acrophobia
• Alpha Blitz
• Alternade
• Anagrab
• Anagrams -- both a simple game of rearranging letters and a linguistic recreation of making anagrams that seem to illuminate something about the original word, such as "Old west action" for "Clint Eastwood".
• Bananagrams
• Boggle
• Chicktionary - Game from Blockdot
• Euler's Day Off
• Ghost
• Grabbler - a multi-player Facebook board game to form words using letters placed on cubes. The objective is to grab opponents cubes while forming words. iPlaySocial
• Imangi -- a game of sliding rows and columns of letters to form words in crossword fashion.
• Jumble -- game of word forming with letter permutations.
• Lettercube -- form words, advance them and conquer your opponents home
• Literati
• Pass the Bomb -- make a word including the given letters before the bomb explodes
• Quiddler -- a game of forming words using a deck of cards with letters printed on them
• Scrabble
• Scribbage
• Scriptorium -- the game which gives meaning to words
• Take A Letter
• Upwords-- Scrabble-like, with the ability to place letters on top of existing letters to a maximum of five tiers.
• Word Sandwich alphabetizing game akin to a word version of The Price is Right's Clock Game
• Word Tower -- Arrange letters as they fall (in a Tetris-like fashion) to create words (resembling Boggle and Scrabble). Words disappear as you select them. Don't let the letters pile to the top, or the game ends.

[edit] Paper and pencil games/puzzles

• Word polygon - A puzzle often include in newspapers combining an anagram with a type of wordsearch.
• Crossword puzzles
• Cryptic crossword
• Cryptograms
• Hangman
• Jotto (or Giotto)
• Word search
• Acrostics

[edit] Structured games

Games focusing on the semantics of words.

• Categories
• Charades
• Fictionary
• LINQ
• Mad Libs
• Scattergories
• Taboo

[edit] Linguistic recreations

Games based around words and letters.

• Anagram as discussed above
• Celebrity Name Game Challenge
• Constrained writing
• Contact
• Ditloids
• Gry
• Homophone Word Game
• How Many Hippos?
• Kaladont
• Kangaroo words
• Letter banks
• Lipograms
• Palindromes
• Pangrams
• Shiritori
• Spelling bee
• Spoonerisms
• The Da Vinci Game
• The Green Glass Door
• The Man Who Melted Jack Dann
• Word golf

[edit] Televised Games

• Spelling bee
• Wheel of Fortune
• Lingo

[edit] Miscellaneous

• Ambigrams
• Fortunately, Unfortunately
• Rebuses - picture puzzles representing a word
• Verbal arithmetic

[edit] See also

• Double entendre
• Forum games
• Fortunately, Unfortunately
• Language game for a linguistic variant.
• List of puzzle video games
• Online Word games
• Puns
• Puzzles
• Word play for literary works in which the nature of the words used themselves become part of the subject of the work.
• Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics

[edit] External links

• / Word Games at the Open Directory Project
• MindsFullOfMusic.com offers oldies song title "wordie" rebus puzzles - fun individually; fun with a small group