Hobbies And Interests
Commercial Games
Scrabble's popularity spans decades. Its game board consists of squares, some of which are colored to denote bonuses. Letter-printed tiles are given different values depending on how difficult the letter is to use. With a continually topped-up rack of seven tiles, players strategically build new words onto existing ones, maximizing their score with bonus squares.
Lexicon is a card game, the winner of which loses his cards first by laying them down as complete words, or adding them to others to make new words. A card can alternatively be swapped with one already played, or with a new one from the remaining pack, for later use.
Boggle is a simple anagram game. Players compete to make as many words as they can from a random selection of letters.
Using Pen and Paper
In Hangman, each player takes turns to mark out the letter spaces of a word or phrase. Their opponent guesses it, letter by letter at first. The "Hangman" fills in all instances of correctly guessed letters, but draws an additional part of a gallows and hanged man for each incorrect letter. Players lose if the hanged man is completed before they guess the word.
For the Sentences game, one player gives the other a word from which they must make a sentence, using the letters sequentially to start each word. For example, the word "cups" could be answered with the sentence, "Climbing Up Plastic Steps." Players should be given one minute to write their (often amusing) sentence.
Spoken Games
In the Word Chains game, take turns to say a word that starts with the last syllable (the sound of it -- the spelling is unimportant) of your opponent's word. For example, if one person says "banana," the other could say "nasty," which could be countered with "steeple." A player hesitating for more than 30 seconds loses the round.
A similar game has each player starting with the last letter in their opponent's word. It is also useful and fun to choose a category like animals, birds or book titles, for example, and run through the alphabet, both naming something beginning with each letter.
Improvisation Games
Improvisation games require quickly remembered vocabulary and also highlight weak areas as you grasp for words to instantly express ideas. For the 90-Second Alphabet game, pair up to act out a scene using each letter of the alphabet, from A to Z in succession, to start each sentence. Furthermore, the scene must be completed within 90 seconds.
For the Whose Line game, ask friends to write out phrases or sayings onto notecards . Go through the suggestions with your partner, acting out an improvised scene for each one that includes the phrase. These games are for two people, but an audience provides urgency and encourages humor.