Comments on: Good games for a word nerd?

Question: Good games for a word nerd?

tastybrains — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 17:48:05 -0800

What are some really fun computer-based word and/or trivia games for one player? Online or desktop-based are fine.

(I did search for word games in the archives and didn't find anything, so I do apologize if this has been answered already...)

I've played PopCap's Bookworm Adventures through twice and already do an online crossword puzzle everyday. I need some new ways to have some geeky, brain-exercising fun. I am a word nerd, NOT a numbers nerd (e.g. I cannot stand Sudoku).

I love word games and general trivia as well. I like to play a quick round of something while I'm drinking my coffee in the morning and sometimes as a mental break at work or at night. Hit me with your recommendations!

By: Steven C. Den Beste

Steven C. Den Beste — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 17:54:22 -0800

Puzzle Pirates? I've never played it, but I understand it can become quite addictive.

By: Steven C. Den Beste

Steven C. Den Beste — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 17:58:31 -0800

Wikipedia on "Puzzle Pirates"

By: demiurge

demiurge — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 17:59:12 -0800

Puzzle Pirates is a multiplayer puzzle game, which doesn't sound like what you're after.

Have you tried You don't know jack? They've got lots of flash content you can try out.

By: necessitas

necessitas — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 18:01:00 -0800

No word puzzles in puzzle pirates.

Try word mojo gold on yahoo games. Very addictive.

By: TonyRobots

TonyRobots — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 18:01:40 -0800

Really light-weight but pretty addicting anagramming game:

Samarang

By: Tacos Are Pretty Great

Tacos Are Pretty Great — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 18:03:18 -0800

okay, this is obvious, but Scrabble. (the real thing, not that yahoo literati crap.)

By: iconomy

iconomy — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 18:04:06 -0800

I love short and sweet text games too. Text Twist and 8 Letters are both awesome and addictive word games from the equally awesome Jay is Games. You can play them for a few minutes or a few hours. Those are my two go-to games when I have a few minutes to kill. Jay is Games houses the motherlode of online games, and they review all of them. Also fun are the games at Games For the Brain - fast and challenging.

By: kimdog

kimdog — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 18:12:37 -0800

Babble. I was intensely addicted to this for a while.

By: ebee

ebee — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 18:19:44 -0800

My friend Lobster runs Word Sandwich and Five Letter Words, both of which are worth hours upon hours of word nerdery. Not that I would know.

By: arha

arha — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 18:35:04 -0800

Seconding babble. Very very addictive.

By: AndrewStephens

AndrewStephens — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 18:37:02 -0800

Modesty prevents me from linking to my own MeFi Project.
Well alright, if you insist: WordMap

By: Khalad

Khalad — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 18:51:39 -0800

Oh Lord, TextTwist is ridiculously addictive. For word nerds, check. One player, check. Quick rounds, check.

TextTwist-inspired puzzle: what four letters yield the most anagrams? For example, you can make three words from I, F, T and S: FIST, FITS, and SIFT. How many four-word sets can you think of? Can you do better than four?

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 19:05:00 -0800

I like WEBoggle, just online Boggle against a bunch of random strangers, but good in short little bursts. Not exactly puzzles but good for flexin the old lexicon. pots, post, opts, stop, spot

By: sLevi

sLevi — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 19:16:16 -0800

I third TextTwist...I just found it last week and I'm totally addicted. Now, can I get it for the GameBoy?

By: wackybrit

wackybrit — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 19:20:55 -0800

There are a whole ton on Yahoo! Games. I've played them for hours. There's Word Racer for starters. Many are for one player but some are multi-player but can be played as single player games (that is, they're just score based).

By: Sweetie Darling

Sweetie Darling — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 19:24:56 -0800

CRICKLER! Or via the Washington Post (registration required). Three new puzzles a day: current events, vocabulary and crossword. Help get my brain going in the morning.

Also, not exactly a game, but a word-association blog from Glark at Damn Hell Ass Kings: Who In The What Now? A new word every day, just write whatever comes to mind. Great for getting the brain moving in the morning.

By: imposster

imposster — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 19:48:26 -0800

The Jumble online - I always like how the suspense builds right until the terrible pun is revealed at the end. Thrilling and horrifying at the same time.

By: redbed

redbed — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 20:03:27 -0800

I've been ridiculously addicted to Scrabulous (it's just scrabble, y'all) for a few months.

They've recently added a "blitz" game room which is basically a four minute scrabble-laced anxiety attack.

By: legotech

legotech — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 20:05:12 -0800

pogo.com will snarf up tons of your time :)

By: soonertbone

soonertbone — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 21:34:09 -0800

I haven't played in quite some time, but I used to really like the games on Boxerjam.

In the wordgames category, I like Flexicon and Clink.

In the trivia category, my favorites are "Know It All" and "Mindstein," but they're all pretty fun. In fact, I may go play some right now.

By: necessitas

necessitas — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 21:58:10 -0800

Ooooh! Seconding Flexicon and Clink!! I haven't thought about either since my dial-up days on AOL. Oh, how I was addicted to those games. I wonder if they are still as addictive . . .

damn you soonertbone

By: Khalad

Khalad — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 06:39:27 -0800

pots, post, opts, stop, spot, tops
also: part, prat, rapt, tarp, trap

By: chuckdarwin

chuckdarwin — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 07:38:25 -0800

Let me second the recommendation for Scrabulous - it's pretty good for a java-based thing. It's not like RL Scrabble because it's timed, but it's very close.

By: tastybrains

tastybrains — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 07:49:29 -0800

Thanks guys! So far I am really enjoying Babble. I am going to check out many of the others as time permits.

Puzzle Pirates is really great - I have gone through phases of being addicted to it - but its games are more similar to Tetris / Snood / Bejeweled. There's no word or trivia games.

By: Plutor

Plutor — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 07:51:14 -0800

jessamyn: "I like WEBoggle" - I wrote WEBoggle

By: taliaferro

taliaferro — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 08:05:33 -0800

Plutor, God bless you. And God bless Evan for adding BigBoggle too.

By: flibbertigibbet

flibbertigibbet — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 08:36:19 -0800

Games for the Brain is somewhat repetitive, but has everything from sudoku, to an entire section of word games (found by clicking on the 'word games' link at the bottom). You can play forever.

By: radioamy

radioamy — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 09:30:13 -0800

East Of The Web has great games. I love PopWord and 8-in-1.

By: ObscureReferenceMan

ObscureReferenceMan — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 09:32:27 -0800

Plutor, you rule! I love WEBogle!!!

By: whatzit

whatzit — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 10:04:26 -0800

Plutor: I love you too. WEBoggle helped me through many, many hours where I was supposed to be doing research...

By: XQUZYPHYR

XQUZYPHYR — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 10:28:36 -0800

I've played PopCap's Bookworm Adventures through twice

I just hung out this weekend with Steve Notely, who aside from Bob the Angry Flower also wrote the script for BA. You'll be happy to know the sequel is on its way.

By: Cricket

Cricket — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 11:32:21 -0800

There's acrophobia, but I haven't seen a formal platform for it in a while. It used to be my biggest non-productive time-sink in my college days, and I believe there are still IRC groups out there playing.

By: DandyRandy

DandyRandy — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 11:37:02 -0800

The Puzzle Society is subscription-based, about $15/yr and you get 4 new crosswords of varying difficulty per day, and several that are updated weekly - also many other puzzles, sudoku, trivia, word search, etc.

By: DandyRandy

DandyRandy — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 11:38:06 -0800

Correction: Puzzle Society is $20/yr or $4/mo.

By: The GoBotSodomizer

The GoBotSodomizer — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 13:04:37 -0800

There's always Typing of the Dead, where you can combine your love of wordiness with your loathing for shambling undead brain eaters.

By: danb

danb — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 13:04:47 -0800

I nth Text Twist. So great.

Fun fact: "yar" is in the Text Twist dictionary, despite not being in any other dictionary I've ever seen (including the OED).

By: thatweirdguy2

thatweirdguy2 — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 15:07:49 -0800

There's acrophobia, but I haven't seen a formal platform for it in a while.

I recently found Acrowars, which is close to the old Acrophobia game. Man, how I miss the old Acrophobia... the sound effects, the graphics, the perverted minds of the Internet...

By: bjrubble

bjrubble — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 15:34:56 -0800

The desktop version leaves something to be desired, but WordWiggle (a basic Boggle clone) has a free version for Palm, which is getting a bit long in the tooth but is my go-to whenever I'm sitting around doing nothing for a few minutes.

By: stilly

stilly — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 15:47:30 -0800

Yet another vote for TextTwist... I remember discovering that my freshman year in college... I think my grades suffered for it that semester, but it was soooo addictive I couldn't stop.

By: JHarris

JHarris — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:22:25 -0800

Another vote for WeBoggle, it's been around a while now yet it's still very clean and slick, implemented entirely in Ajax.

By: lester

lester — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 17:26:06 -0800

not for one player, but i liked playing ghost

By: hwestiii

hwestiii — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 19:48:08 -0800

This is kind of a stretch, but The Atlantic Monthly's
famous Puzzler is now available only online. They are cryptic crosswords in the British style and are difficult, addictive, and incredibly satisfying if you can actually solve them.

The downside is that they are available only to subscribers to the print edition. The upside is that if you pop for the $20 or so to subscribe, you get the best magazine in America. They're both treasures.

By: brujita

brujita — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 21:08:06 -0800

I like acrostics better than crosswords.

By: jamjammo

jamjammo — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 00:27:10 -0800

My sole contribution to this thread:
http://www.downloadsquad.com/category/time-waster/
:)

By: Amy NM

Amy NM — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 05:44:41 -0800

You could try these three:

Etymologic: "In this etymology game you'll be presented with 10 randomly selected etymology (word origin) or word definition puzzles to solve; in each case the word or phrase is highlighted in bold, and a number of possible answers will be presented. You need to choose the correct answer to score a point for that question. Beware! The false answers will often also seem quite plausible, and some of the true answers are hard to believe, but we have documentation!"

Wordie: "Wordie lets you make lists of words -- practical lists, words you love, words you hate, whatever. See who else has listed the same words, add citations and comments, and discuss."

Verbotomy: "Verbotomy is about creating words. Every day we create a new definition and matching cartoon. Your challenge is to create a word -- a verboticism -- that matches the definition. After you create your verboticism, you can vote for other authors's words to help select the winning verboticism for the definition."

Have fun!

By: chocolatetiara

chocolatetiara — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 09:35:25 -0800

I agree that East of the Web is good, I do the daily cryptogram in the morning after I read the news. I like it because it lets you put in the letters to solve it very easily, and change them easily.

Also, Merriam Webster has a free daily word game, and for a subscription--I think $9.95 a year, you can get two new word games every day. Dictionary Devil is fun, Bee-Cubed is good too on their site.

By: geeky

geeky — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 09:36:11 -0800

I just hung out this weekend with Steve Notely, who aside from Bob the Angry Flower also wrote the script for BA. You'll be happy to know the sequel is on its way.

Yessssssssssssssssssss. I love word puzzles and games, and Bookworm Adventures is the best game I have found so far. Very much looking forward to the sequel!

I wish I could add some games, but I haven't played anything that hasn't already been mentioned. Since I played through BA, I've been sticking to crosswords because nothing quite lives up to BA.

By: YoBananaBoy

YoBananaBoy — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:53:56 -0800

I love "The Joy of Lex" just for these types of peoples.

By: not_bitter

not_bitter — Fri, 04 May 2007 22:45:26 -0800

Scrabulous is AWESOME. Thanks so much for linking. It's much better than Literati on my machine (and possibly on Firefox in general) and now I'm kind of regretting buying Scrabble a while back. I can play it offline, I guess, but ...Scrabulous is great!

By: jrb223

jrb223 — Sun, 06 May 2007 21:14:59 -0800

I was thinking of posting this elsewhere, but as this word games post was still on the sidebar, I figure it'll find an audience here:

NYtimes.com has a crossword puzzle this week penned by Bill Clinton.

By: lalochezia

lalochezia — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 16:09:10 -0800

Scrabulous.com is the gateway drug to isc.ro