{"id":299,"date":"2015-08-26T09:46:19","date_gmt":"2015-08-26T13:46:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/?p=299"},"modified":"2015-08-26T09:46:19","modified_gmt":"2015-08-26T13:46:19","slug":"the-worlds-easiest-word-game-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/2015\/08\/26\/the-worlds-easiest-word-game-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The World&#8217;s Easiest Word Game"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Every once in a while, it\u2019s nice to have an easy word game. Here\u2019s one that starts easy, but gets surprisingly challenging. It works great in a small classroom or on a family road trip, and is appropriate for all ages.<\/p>\n<h1>How to Win<\/h1>\n<p>Be the last person to say a word.<\/p>\n<h1>How to Play<\/h1>\n<p>The game starts with one person saying a word, then play progresses clockwise around the table, car, or classroom. On your turn, say a word that<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>has the same number of letters as the previous word, <b>AND<\/b><\/li>\n<li>starts with the letter that the previous word ended with, <b>AND<\/b><\/li>\n<li>hasn\u2019t been said before.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you can\u2019t come up with a word, you\u2019re out and play passes to the next player. Don\u2019t worry. No one stays out for long.<\/p>\n<p>If the first word has no match, there is no winner and the next person starts a new game. For example \u201ca\u201d is impossbile to match. So is \u201cI.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Plural words are allowed, but you can make the game harder by eliminating both plurals and past tense.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wpcalloutright\">\n<h1>Adapting for Younger Kids<\/h1>\n<p>We allow every player to get one clue during the game. This gives everyone one chance to get past a word that is very tough.\n<\/p><\/div>\n<h1>Strategy Tips<\/h1>\n<p>Want to play hard core? Try to make every one of your words end with the same letter. After just a few turns, you\u2019ll see the player who comes after you really start to sweat.<\/p>\n<p>The first word is important, because every word after that will be the same length. Start with \u201cthe\u201d and you\u2019re headed for a short game. Start with a five-letter word to stretch things out. Surprisingly, seven and eight letter words also make for a good-length game.<\/p>\n<h1>Educational Opportunities<\/h1>\n<p>When a player says a word, have them use it in a sentence. This both adds an opportunity for people to be funny, and an element of education.<\/p>\n<p>More importantly, the game really gets kids thinking about suffixes, prefixes, and other word variations. Adding an \u201cs\u201d or \u201cing\u201d is obvious. Putting words in past tense is a little more of a stretch, as is adding an \u201cer\u201d (which can add either one or two letters: bluer or yellower). What about adding \u201cable,\u201d as in \u201cwearable\u201d, or \u201cative\u201d, as in \u201ccreative\u201d?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every once in a while, it\u2019s nice to have an easy word game. Here\u2019s one that starts easy, but gets surprisingly challenging. It works great in a small classroom or on a family road trip, and is appropriate for all ages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[38],"class_list":["post-299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games","tag-free-games"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-4P","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}