Letterbox Word Game Links Page

If you enjoy playing the Letterbox Word Game, you might be interested in some of these books and websites.

This is not intended to be a comprehensive listing. There are other Web pages that list hundreds of wordplay resources - you could start with some of the sites listed under Websites, below.

The links here are just some things I have seen that appealed to me.

Books

The Penguin Book of Word Games, by David Parlett (London 1982). Revised edition published as The Guinness Book of Word Games (London 1995). This is a wonderful resource for anybody interested in word games, with descriptions of a huge number of games, mostly ones you can play with no special equipment. It's also got some wise thoughts about issues like how to decide what to allow as a "word" when playing word games. The discussion of some games has actually been shortened in the revised Guinness book (the book has additional sections on boxed games, such as Scrabble and Boggle, and non-game word play topics). So, for spoken and written word games, the Penguin book is probably the better choice. Although both books are out of print, you should be able to get a copy through websites such as the Amazon UK site, or just keep an eye out at your favourite used book shop. Some publisher should reissue it, or better still, commission the author to write an updated edition. In the meantime, you can visit David Parlett's Home Page, where he has articles about a number of word games and a game, Quizl, that you can play on the site.

Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players, by Stefan Fatsis. This is a book about people who would possibly not care for the Letterbox Game, because it recognizes only about half of the 3- and 4-letter words used by hard-core Scrabble players. As Fatsis depicts the Scrabble tournament players, they're a weird subculture, but maybe he's exaggerating?

Oxford Guide to Word Games, by Tony Augarde. Really should be called "Guide to Wordplay", as it covers all sorts of puzzles and recreations, like palindromes, Spoonerisms and concrete poetry, and has relatively little on actual word games. Fascinating reading, just the same.

Blooming English: Observations on the roots, cultivation and hybrids of the English language, by Kate Burridge. A collection of short pieces on peculiarities of English, based on a series of broadcasts on Australian radio. Did you know that "an apron" came from "a napron" via incorrect word division? (The original root is reflected in words like napkin.) A similar process occurred to umpire and adder. Her follow-up title Weeds in the Garden of Words (2004) is in a similar vein, and also worth reading.

The Meaning of Everything - The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary, by Simon Winchester. A great story, full of English eccentrics, American eccentrics and Scottish eccentrics. A project that was planned to take up to a decade and actually took 68 years (reminds me of some computer system projects I've worked on).

Websites

Euler's Day Off has a new puzzle every day, where you have to arrange 25 letters in a 5 by 5 grid to make words across and down. There's an obvious resemblance to Letterbox, the main difference being that with this puzzle, you know all the letters from the start. It calls for some of the same kind of reasoning, so if you enjoy Letterbox, it will be worth having a look at Euler's Day Off.

WORDCOUNT / Tracking the Way We Use Language shows 86,800 words, listed in order of usage frequency in the British National Corpus of written and spoken English. The data is presented in an innovative way - it's pointless to try to describe it: have a look. But don't go thinking that just because a word is in the WordCount list, it should be allowed in the Letterbox game! WordCount includes proper names and other words not usually permitted in word games.

Word Play: Sites that Feature Fun with Words, compiled by Judi Wolinsky. Acronyms, ambigrams, anagrams, antagonyms and the Apostrophe Protection Society - and those are just in the As. And it has a link to the Letterbox Game site, which endears it to me.

In the Open Directory Project, the Wordplay and Word Games categories will be of interest.

Free Word Games, on the free-games.com.au site, has some good links and gives you the opportunity to post a comment and/or cast a vote on each game.

You might also like to look at the Zeal directories For WordSmiths and Word Games. (Although right now, the only link in the top level of the Word Games category is to the Letterbox site, which you already know about.)

A site called East of the Web, which seems mainly dedicated to online fiction, has a word games page that includes the cryptoquote, a daily code-breaking puzzle that can suck you right in, if that sort of thing appeals to you.

The Word Spy, compiled by Paul McFedries. Brand new words and phrases - a fresh one every day, with quotes to prove the words are actually used. A recent example:

wrap rage n. Extreme anger caused by product packaging that is difficult to open or manipulate.

Letter-by-Letter Word Games FAQ, maintained by Graham Toal. This page includes summaries of nearly 500 word-building games - board games, etc, not computer games. Has lots of links to relevant sites, plus a wealth of material of interest to word game programmers.

Forthright's Phrontistery: Obscure Words and Vocabulary Resources, maintained by Steve Chrisomalis. Plenty of intriguing stuff, including several pages about lipograms - writings that avoid using one or more letters.

AllWords Language Guide, has a good page of "Links for Word Lovers".