A SIMPLE WORD GAME THAT ANYONE CAN PLAY

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A careful and astute handling of words can put a smile on one's face. It can also make someone
upset. It's like casting magical spells. Words can make things happen.
Is this why the arrangement of letters in a word is called spelling? FOOD FOR THOUGHT.

The 26 letters in the English alphabet are used to form countless words of varying lengths. Isn't
that amazing? In fact, we don't even need all the letters to form a huge number of words; a six-
letter word is enough to serve the purpose. This brings us to the topic of the write-up. I had first
read about this word game in Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code (Chapter 21):
Once he had written the English word "planets" and told Sophie that an astonishing ninety-two other English
words of varying lengths could be formed using those same letters. Sophie had spent three days with an
English dictionary until she found them all.

You don't need a Scrabble Board. You just need three things- a pen, a piece of paper, and a
dictionary. First, try to form the words of varying lengths on your own. If you are playing it with
a friend, allot 10 points for each and every word you form. You can set a timer before you begin
writing them down. When you are done, you can use the dictionary to form more words. Just
make your own rules if you want.
Let's use the word, 'apples' (six letters), for a simple demonstration.

6 5 4 3 2 1

appels apple, laps, lap, le, a

(from lapse, sales, sap, la,
Fencing) leaps, leap, pal, les
Pales pale, ale, (if it
(Roman god), seal, ape, were
appel sale, app French)
(from Fencing) peal, 😊
plea,
apes,
slap,
apse
(from
Architecture),
 pals,
apps

The preceding words are the ones I could think of right n😂w. It stands to reason that after each
game you will be familiar with many new words (because you will be using the dictionary
afterwards).