Words With ScrabbleScrabble, Words With Friends, Lexulous

by Ron,Ron,Ron

Brainpower Games Anyone Can Play

Brainpower games are those games which exercise your mental capacity. My personal favorite is Chess, but there are many others, some of which you probably already play or have played. Here is a look at a few of the more common ones and how they may help your mind.

Crossword Puzzles

For many years people have noticed that older folks who regularly did crosswords seemed to stay mentally sharper as they aged, compared to those who didn’t exercise their brains in similar ways. Recent research has supported this idea. As a mental exercise, one of the primary advantages of doing crossword puzzles is that it’s a brainpower game you can play by yourself.

Chess

Historically THE thinker’s game, chess is not – contrary to what many think – just a left-brain analytical contest. Playing well requires both hemispheres of the brain. Your left-brain will be analyzing possible moves and predicting responses of your opponent. Your right brain will be grasping the spatial relationships on the board and providing an intuitive grasp of good positioning. An interesting note: many top players are also musically talented, and handling music is right hemisphere function in most people.

Scrabble

You may think that this classic word game is all about vocabulary, and it can really help you learn a lot of new words, especially if you play with an open-dictionary rule. But to really play well, you have to learn strategy. You have to figure out where to place your words, and how to make multiple words in one play. A good understanding of how to score the most points on each turn can make you a better player than an opponent with a larger vocabulary.

Sudoku

Sudoku has recently become very popular, with the puzzle books appearing in most bookstores now, and even at grocery-store check-out displays. Though it’s all about numbers, it isn’t really about math skills as much as it is about deductive reasoning. Like crossword puzzles, it also has the advantage of being a one-person activity, and a small book of these puzzles can be carried with you anywhere.

Poker

Whether played for money or just chips, poker is one of the best of the brainpower games because it requires so many different kinds of mental skills. You need to understand probabilities and how to analyze a hand in relation to all the other information you have. You need to be observant to gather that information from the players around you. Learning to “read” other players is a big part of the game too. Poker is directly useful in training you for real life decision making, because it develops your intuitive grasp of what a “good bet” consists of.

Boggle

While not as popular as it used to be, you can still buy a Boggle game in many department stores. It is a word game based on observation and fast thinking more than vocabulary. Attempting to quickly find words in the letters is great for training your mind to look for patterns. Once you notice an “s” for example, you can look at every noun thereafter to see if the “s” can be connected to it to create another word and more points. It is a vocabulary game in part, but decent pattern recognition skills are the best advantage you can have.

Some Other Brainpower Games

The game of dominoes can be very analytical if you play it well. Card games like gin rummy are good for developing pattern-recognition abilities. The classic board game, Monopoly, or the pricier “Cash Flow” game by Robert Kiyosaki, are both good brainpower games, as well as being good for learning real estate investing principles and habits.

by Manuel Cernuda

People Who Play Word Games

- By Lance Hemenway

They’re almost everywhere. Hiding within small libraries, or huddled in the dark—frightened of the daylight. -People who play word games; the rare and talented individual who actually delights in the flirtation between language and entertainment. But who are these bizarre people? Why do they play these word oriented games? And are the rest of us in any real danger?

Word games have existed for a long time. Looking for words and phrases in a series of mixed up letters has been with us since civilizations have been able to put pen to papyrus. Anagrams, palindromes, lexigrams, and puns have all found their way into our lives at one time or another. People like being able to engage their minds while being entertained. Of course, there are some people who prefer not to be bothered with “Intellectual stimulation” during their entertainment. -And those people watch “Cops.”

For some time, games like Boggle, or Scrabble, did seem to disappear into the distant haze of our early childhood memories. And it was true, that during the immense growth spurt of the video game industry, puzzle games, in general, officially lost favor with the public nation wide. But in the last few years, with the growing amount of imported board games from countries like Germany, board games have been through a renaissance of sorts. Sales of board games in general, and more specifically, word games, have increased dramatically.

In regards to online gaming, the situation is similar. Downloadable games continue to find their way into almost every household. And it is in this respect that word games have really found their niche. Computer gamers have spent thousands of their free hours online stimulating their little brains till their heart’s content.

For example, the game “Love Letters,” a new title available on Jenkat Games. (www.jenkatgames.com) The game combines the flavor of Scrabble with the framework of your typical video game experience. Released just in time for Valentine’s Day, Love letters allows players to search about in a box of candy hearts, searching for the proper letters to spell words provided them on a list. The farther you proceed, the more words you have to assemble.

Word games are staging a bit of a comeback. And in many ways, they never lost favor at all. Many people have discovered that word games have increased their ability to focus, and concentrate for longer periods of time. Gamers have shown their love for word games in all of its various forms, while game manufactures attempt to feed the growing demand. Word games are not only a big part of gaming as a whole, they are a growing part of video-gaming as well. And that fact doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon.

by libbydorazione

The Attraction of Skill Games

A game of skill is a game where the result is determined generally by mental and/or physical skill, as opposed to pure chance or luck.

I was doing research recently as we wanted to add a Learn Skill Games program to our gambling information site and along the way, I discovered the attraction of these games.

Not only do players revel in the challenge and the wide variety of game choices/types, but also the mention of checkers, dominoes, hangman and jigsaw puzzles brings on fond childhood memories. Most of us then graduated to rummy, backgammon, scrabble and the ultimate challenge-chess.

While skill games will never replace casino gambling online or off in popularity, it is a universal internet topic with a multitude of sites offering free or tournament play.

I classify 7 skill game types as follows: Card, Board, Dice, Tile, Word, Puzzle and Sports Games.

As skill games is such a broad topic and could not be covered in a single article, I will present examples for each game type and offer a brief description and/or history for each.

1) Card Games: use a deck of cards as their central tool. Examples are Rummy, Bridge and Canasta. Rummy has many ‘cousins’ or versions. To name a few, there is the world famous, Gin Rummy along with Oklahoma Gin, Knock Rummy, Continental, 500 Rum or Pinochle, Kalookie and Pan or Panguingue.

2) Board Games: maintain turn-based play in that one player’s move/strategy is followed by their opponents’ move/strategy. Players can only move at their turn. Examples are chess, checkers and backgammon.

The origins of these board games go back centuries. Chess became so popular that other games took second place during the middle ages. It’s not certain if chess was invented by one or more people, but warfare was a likely reason for its development.

Checkers is believed to have originated in the desert country of Egypt where it was known as Alquerque around 650 BC, though there are caves from 1400 BC that depict Alquerque like images.
The game was played by philosophers and thinkers such as Plato and Homer as it provided immense mental challenge.

3) Dice Games: use a number of dice as their central tool. Board games often use dice to determine a player’s standing in the game; however, dice alone generally don’t determine the outcome of the game in relation to other characteristics like strategy or skill. Examples are Sic Bo, Yahtzee and Poker Dice.

Poker Dice is one of the most famous dice games, especially online. The dice display replicas of playing cards instead of numbers. Each of the six sides represent Ace, King, Queen, Jack, Ten and Nine that are used to form a Poker hand. The object of the game is to make the best poker hand.

4) Domino/Tile Games: utilize a central tool of a set of tiles called dominoes that have two ends, each with a given number of dots or pips. Therefore, each combination has 2 possible values and each domino is unique in the set. Most domino/tile games are ‘card games without the cards’. Examples are Dominoes, Pai Gow and Mahjong.

Who invented the game of Mahjong? In all probability, this game was devised by Confucious, who traveled in China during that era. He was fond of birds – perhaps that is why the game was christened as Mahjong, which denotes a sparrow. Perhaps the 3 cardinal virtues professed by Confucious were represented through three dragon tiles–red, green, and white.

5) Word Games: so many word games, so little time. A short list of examples is Scrabble, Hangman, Cryptograms, Jotto, Jumble, Acrophobia and Wheel of Fortune.

6) Puzzle Games: puzzle me these examples-Sudoku, Crosswords, the oh, so frustrating–Rubik’s Cube along with a group of way cool online puzzles–Bejeweled, Deal or No Deal, Chuggles and Jungle Bubble.

7) Sports Games: merge physical and mental skills. Examples are Billiards and Darts. Sports Games of football, rugby, basketball and soccer require ‘big time’ physical and mental skills.

During this short trip down memory lane, I am certain that you too have discovered the attraction of skill games. Now, how about a game of rummy?

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by matt.ohara

Top 5 Classic Board Games

If you were to make a list of your favorite indoor board games what would you include? Would chess be one of them? Or are you Life or Scrabble fan? There are a large number of board games that are classics and have stood the test of time. These people often have a large collection of them and they are always looking for something new. But, the fact is, that some games are must-haves. These games have transcended generations and we hold them dear to our hearts. This list has been compiled after aggregating results from several sources. Our global top 5 list is:

1. Monopoly: This is one of the world’s most well known board games. The game is a game of real estate, purchasing property, developing it and then making sure others lose their money before you do. This board game has a number of different versions to reach from young kids to the most sophisticated of all professionals. There are deluxe editions as well as fun loving Disney editions, sports editions, and even cat and dog-opoly! One or more of the various flavors of this game is likely to hang around for years to come.

2. Scrabble: Another classic that has diehard followers. A lot of people start playing scrabble to improve their vocabulary. In this game, the goal is to outwit the other player, scoring more points by creating more high-scoring words. A game that most people fall in love while they are just picking up the English language. Some of these hang around and make a career of it. The true testament that this game is truly global is that the current world champion hails from Thailand.

3. Chess: Chess goes as far back as the 7th century. The game is strategy at its best. It is one game that many will study, learn, and spend a life learning again. It’s a game you learn to love as you pick up more strategies with time. Chess has an extremely large following of people.

4. Checkers: is another popular board game. Everyone recognizes the black and red checkered board and it is one of the simplest of games to learn. It has been around since about the 1500′s where people began playing with far less interesting pieces.

5. Life: This is a relatively newer game in comparison to the other four. This is designed to be, well, like real life. Go through and make choices that will eventually effect what you can and cannot do in life. A game with plenty of options and each choice will take you in a completely different direction. This game and its different varieties such as the Simpson’s version continue to hold promise for many years to come.

by Jenn and Tony Bot

Online Games Adds Fun In The Education Of Children

Children constantly need to be enlightened and entertained so that they do not get bore and lose interest in their studies, which is very important in building their career. Enlightenment and entertainment both can be accomplished via online games. Though there are issues that relate that the computer games take up all of the children’s time, which should be otherwise spent doing homework. There are several other problematic issues but still computer games are thought to be worthy in the sense that it prevents worthless distractions and can in fact provide certain benefits for instance that leads to improvement in thinking in children who play them.

Though there are several conflicting opinions regarding the generative role of computer but the reality is that there are many computer games that played not just for fun but it also enable children to develop their thought processes. For instance games like word games that comes in a variety of types including crossword puzzles or Scrabble-type games really get kids to think, produce no harmful effects for the children and help them to improve their vocabulary while having fun. Not only this there are many skills that children can expertise playing computer games. Apart from improving the thinking process online games help them to improve to spell the different types of words correctly, which would surely make a great difference in the future. Online game Scrabble is one such entertaining game that helps the children to spell the words correctly and also use their minds to come up with new words as well as improve their spelling on the words which they already know. There are varying levels of Scrabble which the children may increase each time after they have finished the level that they were playing.

Online games besides improving the thinking skills and spelling skills in children it also aids in problem solving skills. Problem solving skills can be practiced in a number of ways for instance you can play logic games and other thought provoking computer games that will be beneficial to you in several ways. Playing these types of games online will help the child who plays these games online to gain self confident, become self sufficient and perform the given work alone with no-ones help as the computer will provide automated competitors.

Therefore it can be concluded that there are downsides of online games that could not be denied but there are also upsides of online games that also has to be paid attention to introduce fun in the time-table of regular activities of your child so that beside education they can also learn the various skill that are useful in their future

Read more…>>>

by mrjoro

Game Basics: How To Play Word Games

Word games are an exciting venue for gamers with potentially endless possibilities when it comes to providing you with an intellectual outlet for having fun. When looking for a fun word-based game that thrives on challenging the creativity of its players, you will find that games such as, Scrabble have come to be known as one of the smartest word type board games available today. By challenging you to think outside the box and form words using only a small selection of randomly chosen letters, this intellectual board game presents a cranial challenge that few other games can provide. Word games are one of the best ways that you can both have fun and still exercise your brain. These types of games are very easily easy learned but can still provide a challenge for even the most expert players.

Many word games such as Scrabble are designed for two to four players seated around a board, that in many cases is designed, with making words as its main objective, Scrabble in particular has a number of blank spaces to hold lettered tiles. Some of the spaces on the board have special colors and markings, which can grant extra points to the player who first lays a tile on one of these spaces. The game begins by each player drawing seven different tiles out of the cloth bag to form their base of letters. With these seven letters, you will form the words, which will score you points on the game board. The player who goes first starts by laying down their first word on the board, using the exact center space of the board, which is generally marked with a star. This player will then score points based on the numerical values on each lettered tile along with any specially colored spaces on the game board, which denote extra points opportunities. At the end of a turn, the player will then pick new tiles out of the bag to return their number of tiles to seven.

Play then passes to the next player and you continue this routine, playing tiles and scoring points, with the simple exception that any new tiles placed on the board must be connected to a word already set, branching off one of the letters of that word much like a crossword puzzle. The game play will continue in this way, placing tiles and replacing letter tiles, until the cloth bag is empty. At this point, all players are stuck with the tiles left in their hand and the game continues until one player has successfully used all of the tiles in their hand.

At this point, the game is considered over and you will tally up all of the points in each player’s hand. Any tiles left in the hand of any players will be subtracted from their final score and added to the score of the player to first use all of their tiles. Once you calculate the final scores of all players, the winner is declared. As is demonstrated, the winner is not the first person to simply use all of their tiles, although this can provide a great advantage. The player who chose the best tiles and who figured out the best way to use them on the board is the one who wins, giving you the chance to determine your own fate in this exciting game.

The public knows Scrabble as one of the most intellectual but still fun games available today. If you were looking for a stimulating challenge that doesn’t take too much effort to learn, Scrabble would be a great place to begin. Good for children and adults alike, Scrabble can give you the mental boost that you are looking for. Another great word game played in the same vein is Upwords, where you will find that it also uses tiles that you must make words, with a few differences. Both bring you all the mind boggling excitement that you can only get from word games.

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Word Games 3 Pack: Pogo Tumble Bees Deluxe + Word Whomp Deluxe + Word Krispies

• Fast paced anagram game, three ways to play
• Puzzle Mode: Take your time, challenge you vocabulary
• Eat your way through hilarious cereal brands, to unlock all the toys
• Exciting power-ups, multi-marshmallow combos, double letters and more
• Word Game: link letters, build words, fill the honey pot. Challenge Mode: Head-to-head action

Dig your way to a bigger vocabulary in this hilarious spelling game. Spell three- to six-letter words to help move your gopher friends closer to their yummy veggies. Whomp the little guys into place and watch the scoreboard behind them keep track of the words you’ve already spelled. Get help from an in-game dictionary and the gophers themselves! How long can you survive without running out of words?
Word Crispies lets you have a little more fun at breakfast time! Eat your breakfast by combining

List Price: $ 16.99

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