A logophile loves to play with words. We can get highly engaged (and very competitive) with wordplay, puzzles, anagrams, palindromes, puns, misdirection, deliberate misunderstandings, and witty juxtaposition for humorous effect.
Scrabble captures us young. And yes, we do crossword puzzles in bloody ink.
To Pun or Not to Pun
That is never the question!
- I’m going to stand outside. So if anyone asks, I’m outstanding.
- Why did Shakespeare only write using pens? Pencils confused him. 2B or not 2B.
- Why did the introvert become an astronomer? She needed her space.
- Le mot juste. They used precisely the right word
- What kind of dinosaur can help you find a handy synonym? A thesaurus.
“Knock knock!”
- “Who’s there?”
“To.”
- “To who?”
“Actually, it’s to whom.”
Comma ’gain?
Fight Club
Meetings about the Oxford Comma always end in fight club. What happens in fight club, stays in fight club. Until we take it to the Internet.
What’s the difference between a literalist and a kleptomaniac?
- A literalist takes things literally.
- A kleptomaniac takes things, literally.
I thought, “That’s an unnecessary comma.”
Then it hit me.
Punctuating the Punchlines
If punctuation defined personality, what would you be? Do you know any of these characters?
The Period: they tell it like it is. The period is blunt. They don’t beat around the bush. Tell it like it is. If you need a yes or no answer, you can always depend on the period.
The Comma: commas are hyper organized, love scheduled dates, rules, order and discipline. Despite these militaristic qualities, they sometimes speak in long, complicated sentences and draw their speech or writing out. Why? Because they can.
The comma doesn’t care for the parentheses.
The Parenthesis: very easily distracted and very good at passing that distraction on to you. They jibber jabber, tell convoluted tall tales and frequently interrupt conversations by interjecting random and irrelevant trivia or “fun facts!” they read on Wikipedia.
The Ellipsis . . . is the one who’s always up to something. They are always plotting their next move. They often make life exciting, are full of innuendo and will always leave you guessing or asking “WTF?”
The Interrobang ( ⁉️ ) is the one who jumps before looking and frequently takes you with. They don’t always know what’s going on, but they’re always game for whatever whenever! They love good ideas, new information and throwing surprise parties. The interrobang’s favorite phrase is: Can you believe it that shit ⁉️
The Quotation mark: is the one you turn to for advice. Whenever you’re lost, you can lean on quotation marks for advice. They’re often filled with wisdom, guidance, and hilarious anecdotes. They are frequently storytellers, but live to ramble, so pick out their best tidbits and scrap the rest.
The Reference Mark: they are the know-it-all and the snobbier (often bombastic) version of your parenthesis friend. While parentheses drops fun facts into your lap, the reference mark will fill you in on all the gory and boring details. Beware what you tell them in confidence because they are known to be huge gossips.
Do you want to Play a Game?
Wargames anyone?
Top Ten word games to enrich your word-nerd parties. Dungeons and Dragons didn’t make the cut,
# 1 Best of the Best is Balderdash
Each player takes a turn crafting fake definitions for obscure words in the hope that others will select the false meaning from a set of possible definitions. How is that not an epic drinking game?
Boggle
Players take turns jumbling a four-by-four grid of letter cubes. Then they try to form as many words as they can from the letters displayed on adjacent cubes.
Catch Phrase
Players take turns providing teammates with clues to the identity of a secret word before a timer goes off. Pressure cooker!
Little Words
This game works like a crossword: each puzzle has 7 clues, 7 mystery words, and 20 tiles that include groups of letters. You need to solve the clues and rearrange the letter types so you can create the answers to the mystery words. It compares to an anagram.!
Password
Players try to influence or persuade their teammates to identify a secret word by providing one-word clues.
Scrabble Upwords
Players form words by placing letter tiles on a board, but, unlike in Scrabble, all letters have equal value. The bonuses are earned by forming new words.
Taboo
Players try to guide their teammates to guess a word by providing word clues. They are prohibited from using a list of the most obvious clues.
Text Twist
Players form as many words as possible from a randomly generated group of letters before a timer runs out.
Word Zigzag
A Boggle-like game with a grid of letters in which players attempt to find strings of letters that form words.
Zig-Zag
A guessing game. Players seek to reveal the other’s secret words by uncovering how many letters of another word are in the secret word, and where they are positioned.