I’ve loved word games pretty much all my life. We’ve played Scattergories at my family get-togethers for years, I remember playing Scrabble with my Dad when I was a kid, and now, thanks to the free weekday New York Times that are provided to us at school, I usually work on the crossword over lunch. Here’s another one I found:

It’s pretty simple and addicting: out of a 3-by-3 grid of letters, make as many words as you can in two minutes. It’s not like Boggle, where the letters have to be contiguous. Use them in whatever order you want, and reuse as many as you want: it’s more a test of your vocabulary than your ability to pick out tiny little patterns, like in Boggle. (Though there is a good free Boggle clone I’ve found at Wordsplay.) If you want to achieve Supermaster or better, you have to (1) use a mouse, not a trackpad (trackpads are too slow), (2) repeat root words with different suffixes (e.g., use both the singular and plural form of a noun or verb), (3) make good use of comparative and superlative forms of adjectives, (4) use other suffixes as much as possible, and (5) develop a list of long words you know off the top of your head that are composed of only a few common letters (e.g. s, t, r, and i). This last is particularly important, since then you’ll be able to go on autopilot for a good chunk of the time.

Anyway, try it.

Tags: Games, Language