The Wonderful O

The Wonderful O

A lipogram is a word game that consists of writing new material or rewriting existing material by leaving out certain letters of the alphabet. (Lipogram comes from a Greek word meaning “missing letter.”) One of the most famous practitioners was A. Ross Eckler, who...
Apples to Apples

Apples to Apples

I am partial to games that encourage imagination and foster fun. One game that does both is Apples to Apples from Out of the Box Games (https://ootbgames.com/). It’s also a vocabulary-builder. The premise is simple: One person serves as a judge – players take turns in...
Spot It!

Spot It!

I first reviewed Spot It! more than a decade ago, and I still like it. Each of the 55 cards in the round deck depicts 8 various-sized symbols such as an anchor, baby bottle, ice cube, zebra, heart, moon, cactus, and ladybug – with a total of 57 objects in all. Take...
Gabbing about Gobblet

Gabbing about Gobblet

Gobblet is usually described as a combination Connect Four and Tic-Tac-Toe in which players “gobble up” their opponent’s pieces. However, you won’t gain calories or work up a sweat while you give your brain a strategic workout with this tabletop game. Gobblet is like...
UpWords

UpWords

Many years ago as a young mother, I was big into cooperative games. The other members of my competitive family were not. They played Scrabble® ruthlessly, entirely focused on points, while I was interested in filling the whole board, increasing my vocabulary, and...
Do You Doodle?

Do You Doodle?

People have a tendency to think they need to solve puzzles created by others – crosswords, Sudoku – to keep their brains active, but using your imagination is even better. The goal in brain building is to create new dendrites – new connections – in your brain, and...