Mental Floss

5 Old-Timey Word Games You Can Play Today

Tired of Wordle? Give these word games a try.
ByJake Rossen|
Who doesn’t love a rousing round of Crambo?
Who doesn’t love a rousing round of Crambo? | Ipsumpix/Corbis via Getty Images (parlor scene), designer29/DigitalVision Vectors/Getty Images (speech bubble)

The crossword puzzle, that pinnacle of all word games, seems like it’s been around forever. In fact, it was introduced relatively recently (1913), making it somewhat of a newcomer for games that use language as fodder for both hints and solutions. Take a look at some very vintage word games that can still give you a verbose victory today.

  1. Doublets
  2. Jotto
  3. Minister’s Cat
  4. Fictionary
  5. Crambo

Doublets

The brainchild of author Lewis Carroll (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland), this game tasks players with taking one word and transforming it into an entirely different one by changing just one letter at a time—all while making sure the transitional steps are actual words, too. The bookended words are usually related. One could, for example, try to turn fire into hose by opting for tire, tore, pore, pose, and then hose.

Jotto

First devised by real estate developer and word lover Morton Rosenfeld in 1955, Jotto might sound familiar to Wordle enthusiasts. Using pen and paper, players try to guess the other’s five-letter word by seeing how many letters they got right and where. “Mental Jotto,” in which one player tries to guess another player’s word without writing anything down, tells you how many correct letters you got—but not which letters, making it a good deal harder than the Wordle enthusiasts have it today.

Minister’s Cat

This group game tasks players with declaring that “the minister’s cat is a ____ cat,” with the blank being an adjective beginning with a, then b, then c. Each round begins with a new letter. If a player misses, repeats a word, or otherwise makes a mistake, they’re eliminated. Some versions increase the difficulty by having players repeat the previous answers.

Fictionary

Victorians amused themselves with this game in which one player produces a dictionary and finds a very obscure word that’s read aloud to other players. Those players then jot down a made-up definition. The first player then reads all definitions out loud, including the real one, and invites the others to guess which is legitimate. Participants get points when their fake definition is guessed or when someone guesses correctly.

Crambo

Crambo is a rhyming game dating back to at least 1660. The first player announces they have a word that rhymes with sea. The other player can then ask, “Is it a vegetable?” The first player then says, “No, it’s not a pea.” The answer must allude to a rhyme that the first player then utters. Here’s how it might go:

Player 1: I have a word that rhymes with sea.
Player 2: Is it a vegetable?
Player 1: No, it’s not a pea.
Player 2: Is it a drink?
Player 1: No, it is not tea.
Player 2: Is it an insect?

After a few rounds of this, both players sit down and wait for television to be invented.

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