Word games - Definition and Overview

Word games can be of several different types:

Letter arrangement games, where the goal is to form words out of given letters:

• 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 dog for god.
• Boggle
• Option
• Pick Two
• Scrabble
• Swedish puzzles
• Upwords
• Ghost

Paper and pencil games/puzzles:

• Acrostic puzzles
• Crossword puzzles
• Cryptograms
• Hangman
• Jotto (or Giotto)

Structured games, focussing on the semantics of words:

• Categories
• Charades
• Fictionary
• One, Two, Three

Linguistic recreations based around words and letters

• Anagram as discussed above
• Constrained writing
• Ditloids
• Palindromes
• Pangrams
• Lipograms
• Shiritori
• Oxenfez

See word play for literary works in which the nature of the words used themselves become part of the subject of the work. See language game for a linguistic variant.

External links

• Word games category of the Open Directory Project (http://dmoz.org/Games/Video_Games/Word_Games/)