Hobbies And Interests
Scrabble
This classic board can be played by two to four people. The Scrabble board is made of different "cells": 15 across and 15 down, making for a total of 225 cells. Each player draws seven tiles, each bearing a letter. The first person begins at the center of the board, placing some of the tiles allotted to him/her to form a word. The next player adds another word, making sure that it is connected to the first word already made. Each time a player places some tiles on the board, he or she has to draw the same number from the tile bag so that his or her stack of tiles always remains at seven. Different letters are assigned different point values, and the total number of points of all the letters in the word makes up the player's score. The person who has scored the highest number of points at the end of the game is the winner.
Crosswords
Crosswords are a fun and interesting way to improve your vocabulary; they help you learn new idioms, phrases and words. Each crossword is made of a square grid. The grid has some blacked-out cells and some white ones. The objective is to finish filling in all the empty cells with the help of the clues given. There will be separate clues to fill in the letters of a word horizontally ("across") and from top to the bottom ("down"). A simple clue would ask for the synonym of a word or phrase. (For example, if the clue is "baby goat," the answer is "kid.") You have to fill in the entire grid, keeping in mind the possible answers to the other clues.
Hangman
You can modify the game of Hangman to include different English words and phrases. Two people can play this game. The aim of the game is to guess the phrase before the stick figure man is "hanged." The game begins with the gallows for the stick figure drawn and blanks for every letter of the phrase that the player has to guess. At every turn, the player gets to guess one letter (vowel or consonant) and the other person has to fill them up wherever they appear in the phrase. If a letter does not appear in the phrase, the stick figure is one step closer to being hanged. First draw the head, then the body and the arms and legs. If the player guesses the phrase before the drawing is completed, he wins. If not, he loses.
Boggle
Boggle is a popular word search game that can be played by two or more people. You need a tray with 16 dice on it (each die has a different letter printed on the face). Shake it to get random letters face up on the tray. Each player has three minutes (marked by the sand timer) to make as many words as possible using the letters shown face up. However, players can join only those letters that are adjacent vertically, horizontally or diagonally. Each word has to have a minimum of three letters, and no letter can be used more than once. At the end of three minutes, each player reads his or her words. Words with a greater number of letters earn more points. The person with the most words wins the game.