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Word Games to Play With Kids

Word games are great because they help children focus on sounds and letters, and develop skills they need for reading, writing, and spelling. By playing word games with our kids, we give them the benefit of our company, as well as demonstrating to them that playing with words is lots of fun. There are also word games that have become board games and toys, but the ones you'll find below need minimal equipment.

Guess the animal: Give children a rhyming word and have them guess the animal. "I rhyme with mat. I am a …"

I spy: This is a simple word game most people know. Spot something nearby and tell kids the sound or letter it begins with. Children must look around and try to guess what it is you "spied."

MORE: Shop 'I Spy' Books in Our Store

Make a word: If you have plastic letters, magnet letters, or letter blocks, you can play this as soon as your child is old enough to spell. Play it mentally with older kids, or with paper and pencil. Simply give your children some letters and challenge them to make words from those letters. Great beginning for board games like Scrabble.

Categories: This is a game I loved as a child. Do you remember it? Simply draw a grid on a piece of paper. Then write some categories (for instance "plants," "girls' names," "cars," "grocery items") down one side of the grid and write alphabet letters across the top. It needn't be the whole alphabet. The aim is to try to think up a word for each letter and category.

Hink Pink: Kids adore this game! One person thinks of two-single syllable rhyming words, like fat cat. She works out a clue that should lead (eventually!) to the answer "fat cat." One clue could be "an obese mouse-catcher" or "a pet that eats too much," depending on the age of the guesser. The guesser tries to work out what the two rhyming words are. The game can be extended to Hinky Pinky (two syllable rhyming words), like happy chappy = "joyful fellow." Or Hinketty Pinketty (three syllable rhyming words, much harder), like mellower bellower = "less angry bull. " Mix and match with Hinky Pinketty or Hinketty Pink!

Here are some Hink Pinks you can use to get you and your child started.

Clues 1. seafood platter 2. huge oinker 3. head cover that's been squashed by a truck 4. warmed up joint between two ropes 5. Rained-on puppy

Answers 1. fish dish 2. big pig 3. flat hat 4. hot knot 5. wet pet

If your child has trouble working out how many syllables are in a word, play a game where you tap the syllables on her arm as you slowly say the word: "butt(tap)-er (tap)-fly(tap)." Or march and dance the words, making strong body movements for each syllable. There is nothing more joyous than the sight and sound of 30 youngsters marching about, chanting the syllables in given words!

Once older kids are used to the game, it can provide a lead-in to crossword puzzles, and then cryptic crossword puzzles. All of these word games are great for developing thinking skills, as well as giving the whole family a way of celebrating the joy of language.

Word Game: I have no idea of the name of this game, but this is how we play it. One person, A, thinks of a five-letter word. A tells B the first letter of the word. B makes guesses at the word and finds out if letters are correct and in the correct place, correct but in the wrong place, or not correct at all. B gets five chances to guess the word.

Here's an example:

A – My five-letter word starts with D.

B – Is it drive?

A - It's not drive. There are no correct letters.

B - Is it donut?

A – It's not donut. The N is correct and in the right place. The U is correct but in the wrong place.

B – Is it dunny?

A – It's not dunny. The U is correct and in the right place, the N is correct and in the right place.

B – Is it dunks?

A – Yes! That's it. The word is dunks.

This game is much easier if you use pencil and paper to keep a record. But doing it mentally is very good memory training! Our family tends to play for fun, but you can keep a running score if you want – the guesser gets 5 points for guessing the word first go, four for guessing on the second go, three for third, two for fourth, one for fifth, and none for missing the word in five guesses. Try four-letter words with younger kids.

 

11 of The Best Word Game Apps 2022 Has To Offer

Word games can save you from the unending bouts of boredom and can also be a great way to bond with people. They’re challenging, engaging and put our verbal abilities to test. They’re also really good for your brain in a lot of ways. They help build concentration because a lot of them require focus. They activate the parts of your brain that take part in short-term and long-term memory processes. So playing word games regularly improves your memory over time. Further, when the game lies just at the edge of your abilities, it helps you improve your cognitive function and vocabulary. So let’s look at some of the best word game apps 2022 has to offer.

Thanks to tech, a lot of our favourite word games are now available online. There’s endless scrabble boards, crosswords and word searches contained in our singular devices. There are also so many clever variations of these classic games to try out! And then there are word game apps that build on familiar concepts to create something entirely new and unique. I’ve tried every single game recommended here (which means I was playing games on my phone in the name of research for about a week!). Every last one of them was quite fun and possibly improved my brain function. So I’m not complaining. I hope you like them too!

1. Wordle (Browser)

Whether you have hopped onto the train to Wordle station or not, you’ve probably heard its siren. This word-guessing game is everywhere. Each player gets six attempts to guess a five-letter word. The colour of the tiles changes indicating the correct letters and positions in the word-to-be-guessed. If that isn’t challenging enough for you, you can also turn on “hard mode.” This involves using all the previously revealed letters in all your subsequent guesses.

There’s a few reasons why this word game’s hype hasn’t died down yet. The simplicity of the game makes it easy for anyone to understand how to play it. The one-word-a-day strategy ensures that people don’t get bored of it. And, trying to guess the same word on a given day with millions of people creates a sense of community. Considering its popularity, The New York Times bought Wordle for a seven figure amount. As of now, the app is still free. There are also a lot of similar apps that let you play Wordle in different languages.

2. Scrabble Go (Android, iOS)

As the name suggests, this is really just Scrabble on-the-go. It’s super fun with the additional layers of customization and rewards that tech can bring. You can compete against your friends, strangers on the internet or the AI. Something I particularly enjoyed was being able to play multiple games at the same time. Don’t want to patiently wait for the other person to type in their word? I don’t want to, either! I think my personal sweet spot is competing with three individual players at once. Having three separate boards to compete on kept me thoroughly engaged the entire time I was playing.

Scrabble Go follows the Collins Official Scrabble Dictionary. It’s free with in-app purchases. Also check out ‘Can You Play The Word Fart In Scrabble?‘ to gain insights into the history of the Scrabble dictionary.

3. USA Today Crossword (Android, iOS, Browser)

Here’s what a fellow Contributor Isabelle Popp has to say about this word game:

“We are truly living in a golden age of crossword puzzles. This daily crossword, available via apps in the Apple App Store or Google Play, as well as playable on the USA Today website and in the paper itself, is the best in the biz. With truly fresh entries and clever cluing, people who’ve avoided crosswords for fear of fusty language and arcane trivia will find lots to love.

“Editor Erik Agard has made huge strides in diversifying not only the content of the puzzles but the constructors themselves. Women and people of color construct the majority of puzzles appearing in the USA Today now. If you’re ad-tolerant, play for free, otherwise subscribe for that extra smooth solving experience.”

4. Pictoword (Android, iOS)

This word game app involves both unscrambling and identifying pictures. You gotta guess the word based on the visual cues given and type it using the letters provided. It’s free with in-app purchases and quite fun!

5. Cryptogram (Android, iOS)

A cryptogram is a puzzle that uses encrypted text. You solve the puzzle to reveal the message. The ciphers used in this game were created to encrypt military or personal messages. When you solve the cryptogram on this word game app, it reveals a motivational quote. Sometimes, solving is easier if you’re already familiar with the quote. The video below shows how the game is played. It’s free with in-app purchases available.

6.

SpellTower (Android, iOS)

This word game involves finding words within the spell tower to clear the tiles. The tower keeps rising and the game is over if it reaches the top. It has three different modes: Puzzle Mode, Tower Mode and Rush Mode. This word game is free with in-app purchases and definitely worth checking out.

7. Wordscapes (Android, iOS)

This is one of the most popular word game apps so you’ve probably played it, come across it, or at least heard of it. It involves building words from a combination of letters. Some of these words end up filling up the spaces provided on the screen. It’s free with in-app purchases. The game Word Cookies! also has a very similar concept with a different user interface.

8. Word Search Puzzle (Android, iOS)

Why mess with a classic? This word game app is free with in-app purchases. It involves searching words arranged vertically, horizontally or diagonally. It has different difficulty levels and you can choose the one that intersects with your abilities. One of my friends said, and I quote, “I can just feel my brain getting smarter every time I play this.” At its best, it might do the same for you. At the very least, it might save you from boredom!

9. Typeshift (Android, iOS)

This is a really cool anagram puzzle. You shift letters vertically to create meaningful words in the mid-horizontal row. The puzzle is complete when all the letters on the screen are used in at least one word. This usually happens when you all use the core words that the puzzle is made of. You also end up finding a bunch of extra words in the process.

This word game is built by the creator of SpellTower and shows up repeatedly in lists of Word game apps that keep the brain sharp. It is free with in-app purchases.

10. Four Letters (Android, iOS)

This word game involves building words using four letters (yes, it’s right there in the name!). To get a high score, you build these words as quickly as you can. You can play this game for as long as you can before the time runs out. This app is free with ads. You can pay to remove the ads.

11. Bonza Word Puzzle (Android, iOS)

This word game app is like a deconstructed crossword puzzle. You get one clue about the theme of the crossword. The letters are arranged in horizontal and vertical patterns. You can drag them to make words that are relevant to the theme. This is quite easy with a few words and a familiar theme and gets tricky as the number of words increase (trickier if you’re not very familiar with the theme).

It has two puzzle packs that are free along with the daily puzzle. The rest can be accessed through in-app purchases.

If you liked this list of the best word game apps 2022, also check out 18 of the Best Word Game Apps in 2021, 12 Great Games for Word Nerds, 10 of the best manga reader apps and sites, and 5 book apps for people who love reading.

Read the book “Play on words. The Practice and Ideology of Literary Translation» online in full📖 — Vladimir Babkov — MyBook.

© V. Babkov, 2022

© A. Bondarenko, artwork, layout, 2022

© AST Publishing House, 2022

* * *

Foreword

This book is not a textbook, much less a scientific monograph. This is an attempt to describe the process of literary translation from the inside, to talk about the difficulties translators face and how they overcome them. Instead of preface each of my judgments and recommendations with a timid “it seems to me” or a self-confident “I believe”, I will make a reservation right away that I do not pretend to the objectivity and universality of the views expressed here. Literature is a vast and free country, and just as one cannot find two identical faces in a crowd, one cannot find two translators in the world who agree with each other in everything. For me, theory (and even “ideology”) is thoughts and generalizations generated by practice. Therefore, I do not consider myself entitled to talk about literary translation in the broad sense and will confine myself to a story about the translation into Russian of English-language prose, which I have been doing for many years. If this book is useful as a guide to other translators, especially beginners, I will consider that I wrote it for a reason. I hope it will also come in handy for inquisitive readers who want to understand how much and how exactly a foreign language work is transformed in the course of translation. But it has nothing to do with the venerable science under the tongue-twistering name “translation studies”: it is just as unreasonable to demand from a translator valuable scientific conclusions about his activities as to expect a treatise on entomology from a butterfly or to be interested in the opinion of a crucian carp about fish farming.

Of course, my attitude towards translation did not arise from scratch. I had the opportunity to work side by side and talk on professional topics with many hardworking and competent comrades in the workshop (imagine a spacious booming hangar, rows of ingenious machines with signs "French", "German", "Chinese" and concentrated craftsmen in ink-stained overalls - this is the translation shop). There is no way to list them all by name, and this is not necessary: ​​no one is free from other people's influences, but only the author himself is responsible for his work.

The fact that I have a more or less complete idea of ​​the craft of literary translation, I owe not only to my own practice and communication with colleagues, but also to my teaching experience. For a quarter of a century, we have studied in detail at seminars at the A. M. Gorky Literary Institute, at the Higher Literary Courses at this institute and at the Azart School of Literary Translation, thousands of translations, from amateur to classical, and fragments from hundreds of works of various genres. It was these classes that prompted me to many of the conclusions set out in the book.

And one more preliminary note. You will find many examples of translation decisions here, including those that are not the best or controversial. Of course, one or two isolated phrases cannot and should not be judged on the quality of the entire translation, and even more so on the level of professional skill of its author. I quote my own translations mainly in the absence of others and only as possible, but by no means as exemplary.

Now, let's get started.

I. Approach

Motives and goals

Before discussing the standard procedures on which the work of a translator is based, and the numerous techniques that make up his arsenal, let's talk about literary (or literary, as it is sometimes called) translation in general. What, why and why do we translate and what result do we strive to achieve?

The first question is the easiest to answer. We translate - at least at first - what we like. If we do not take into account the school lessons of a foreign language, no one forces us to translate. Translators are obtained from readers, which is very logical, because, as we will see later, a translator in one of his hypostases is the most caring, most thoughtful and at the same time the most benevolent reader in the world.

Why are we doing this? Why don't we just remain readers who, having read one book with pleasure, calmly move on to the next? This is harder to explain. Few people start translating, seriously hoping to become a professional and earn a living doing it. In addition, almost everyone who takes the trouble to think about their career prospects knows that the profession of an interpreter does not bring either laurels or big money. Some say that they began to translate in order to share their impressions of what they read with others - usually with someone close to them. This is already “warmer”, but still more often the one who enters into a painful struggle with a foreign language, trying to retell his favorite book in his own, does not think about other people. He just goes on about a vague but irresistible desire - just like those eccentrics who suddenly begin to fold rhyming lines in their minds or stain sheets of white paper with colors.

However, you object, the translator does not create anything anew. The best he can do is not to spoil a thing already created by the author before him. Is it possible to compare him with real creators? But this is usually the opinion of those who have never tried to translate themselves. Experience shows that almost nothing can be translated “on the forehead”; you have to make non-obvious decisions at every step, show ingenuity, and therefore create something new. The very need to translate, perhaps, is explained by the fact that we want to get even closer to the book we love, in some sense to appropriate it to ourselves, but a foreign language prevents us from fulfilling this intention. Our thoughts and feelings are too closely connected with our native language - that's why we sit down at the computer and start, like alchemists, to turn one verbal substance into another.

Probably, our classic Vasily Andreevich Zhukovsky expressed his point of view on the creative component of translation with the maximum categoricalness, stating: “A translator in prose is a slave; the translator in verse is a rival.” These words make one suspect that the famous poet never translated prose, and if he did, it did not work out well for him. However, there is some truth in his aphorism: the prose translation is really very different from the poetic one, and we will discuss this difference later. In the meantime, our answer to the first two parts of the detailed question asked at the beginning of the chapter will sound like this: we translate what we like because we want it. In this case, the question of why we undertake this simply disappears (here it is appropriate to recall that the wise British do not see the difference between “why” and “why”, mixing them in one bottle under the label why), and we only have to decide what, in fact, should come into being as a result of our efforts.

In the obvious answer to this question: “The same book, only in a different language,” an oxymoron is hiding. A book in another language, whatever one may say, is no longer “the same”. We cannot reproduce and transmit to our potential reader exactly the same book, but it is in our power (if only to a certain extent) to reproduce and transmit the information that it contains, along with impression, which we received from her. It is precisely by striving to keep this impression to ourselves that we set to work, and if we manage to conserve it in translation, we can consider our goal achieved.

This answer gives rise to two new questions at once. Firstly, in this interpretation, translation classes look like our personal entertainment: we procrastinate the book we like, rewriting it in Russian, reveling in the thoughts and feelings that it evokes in us, but then why do we need readers at all? Do we really take our manuscript to the publishing house only for the sake of earning, usually not so significant? Secondly, if in the end, readers get not an exact cast from the original, but only its content, colored by the impression it made on us, where is the objectivity here? The public does not care about our experiences - they want to buy the product itself, and not our opinion about it. Not only that, our ability to adequately convey the author's intention raises legitimate doubts in her. There is also no guarantee that we have correctly understood this idea: after all, the translator and the author not only have different life experiences, live in different countries and sometimes in different eras, but even literally speak different languages.

The question of why we need readers can be answered with another question: why do writers need them? Why do musicians need listeners, and why do theater actors and directors need spectators? We start poring over our favorite book because it is interesting to us, but pretty soon we are convinced that this is not enough for serious translation work. For some reason, people need their work to make sense, and for us it finds it when we have readers. As for the objectivity of our interpretation of the original, or rather, the deliberate lack of this objectivity, it remains for us (and our readers) to take for granted the sad fact that a translation is always only an interpretation of the original work, and not its exact copy, and come to terms with this .

Here again, the analogy with other creative professions will help us. We listen to the same musical masterpieces in different performances without demanding (of course, if this performance suits us) that we finally be presented with the “real” Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony or the “authentic” Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto. But even closer than the profession of a performing musician is, perhaps, the profession of an actor to ours. The word "game" is not accidentally placed in the title of this book. Playing with words and words (and also allowing words to play with each other), the translator plays not only the author, but also each of the characters he created, from the main character to the last extra, and if we develop a parallel with cinema and theater, he also performs the role of the director. True, instead of numerous means that help actors and directors create their artistic images: facial expressions, speech intonations, montage, props, we have only thirty-three letters of the alphabet at our disposal, one of which is almost never used, and a handful of punctuation marks.

Of course, all these comparisons are very conditional and amuse only up to a certain limit. It is certainly not worth considering that translation is a continuous self-expression and everything is allowed to the translator, like Ivan Karamazov. The writer is omnipotent, like Jupiter, but the translator is just a bull (or a horse, as Pushkin aptly put it), and he must drag his wagon wherever his master, that is, the author of the original, wants.

Now, having dealt with the motives and goals, let's take a closer look at the translation process itself.

Book "What is the word? Explainer game. Russian & English"

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