Word Games

Yes, I do mean things like Scrabble, Boggle, and so forth -- but also less formal games such as Geography, and general plays on words, punnery, etc. I have long considered the English language to be one of my favorite toys -- second only to people's minds. (That's one of the reasons I like hanging around with smart people -- they have better toys to play with!)

In fact, you may recall Shelley Berman and Richard Lederer doing shticks related to irregular plurals. I thought up the "one index, two indices, therefore one Kleenex, two Kleenices" bit long before I'd heard of either of them. When I got into computers, plurals such as VAXen and Unices came as no surprise.

One of my "outlets" is writing pun stories. That link leads to some of the ones I have reclaimed from dim distant memory and committed to electrons, plus some newer works.

For a brief while, I was a member of the National Puzzler's League (link coming soon), under the "nym" of Beaux Eaux. (For an explanation, see my SCA persona page.) I dropped out because I didn't have time to solve even most of the puzzles each month, never mind all, and didn't like leaving any not at least seriously attempted.

In the Fidonet MENSA Echo, I am known to participate in many a "pun chain". Once upon a time, we played so many word games that some people got sick of it, and asked us to take it elsewhere. I volunteered to start a new echo, and asked for a name. Rich "Birdman" Veraa suggested WORDPLAGUE, which fit admirably with the non-players' opinion of the games.

And then there's Encore, a game commonly available at many game stores. But I prefer what is sometimes called the "Mensa version". (Name used in that context without explicit permission!) Basically, the regular rules require you to recall a song that contains a given word, or type of word (such as vegetable, brand of car, male name from A to M, etc.), and sing six consecutive words from the song, including the word in question, which may be conjugated (such as from "run" to "ran", or "shy" to "shies"), pluralized (such as from "box" to "boxes" or "story" to "stories"), or used in a compound word (not merely a word using the same sequence of letters -- for "run" you can use "runaway" but not "grunt"). The "Mensa version" makes it eight words, and requires that when conjugating, pluralizing, or compounding, the spelling stays the same. Therefore, for instance, you couldn't use "cries" for "cry" or "ran" for "run". There are also sometimes variations on how the game is run, with a judge (or team of judges), changing when the timer is started, changing how long the timer can run, etc.