A Game for Any Number of Players

Equipment: Pencil and paper for each player (or an erasable board)

Object: To score the most points. Players score points by stumping their opponents and by guessing their opponents’ phrases, names, or titles.

To Start: All players think of a familiar two-word phrase, name, or title that they can use to stump the others. Working independently, each player creates a puzzle by weaving letters from both words together, keeping the letters in their original order. Thus, the names DOLLY and PARTON might be interwoven, for example, as PADROLLTONY or DOPARLTONLY. The first letter may come from either word. No more than four letters in a row may come from the same word. See examples in the puzzles below.

To Play: Any player who has finished weaving the two words together may be the first Stumper. That player says “Ready” and spells out his or her puzzle aloud, one letter every one or two seconds, slowing down as the puzzle progresses. The other players write down these letters on their own paper. After each letter is added, each player may make one guess. There is no penalty for an incorrect guess.

The first player to guess the answer receives three points plus one point for every letter not yet added to the puzzle. The Stumper gets one point for each letter of the puzzle that was spelled out before the correct guess was made. When a player has guessed correctly, the player to the left of the previous Stumper becomes the Stumper for the next turn.

To Win: When all players have been the Stumper the same number of times, a round is over. The game is over when an agreed-upon number of rounds has been completed (or there is not enough time to start another round). The player with the highest score wins.

For a printer-friendly file with more WORD WEAVING puzzles, click on the link below. You will need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader to open this file.