Free Games Free Word Games for Seniors: Five to Try
Word games age well. The vocabulary you have spent a lifetime collecting is the whole advantage, and unlike a reflex game nobody gets worse at them.
Five here, all free, all in the browser, all in large print. Here is what each one is actually like, so you can pick the one that suits your mood rather than clicking through five.
Word Search: the gentlest of the five
A grid of letters with a themed list beside it. Find the words, mark them off, done.
Word Search is the one to open when you want something absorbing that never becomes difficult. Tap the first letter of a word and then its last letter, and the whole word marks itself. The letters are extra large, the lists are themed rather than random, and there is a Hint that highlights a word you have not found yet. No timer, no score.
Mini Crossword: five by five, everyday clues
Full-size crosswords are a commitment and a lot of them are cryptic. Ours is a five by five grid with clues about ordinary things, finishable in a few minutes.
The Mini Crossword shows one clue at a time in a bar above the grid, which is the part most crossword sites get wrong on a small screen. Tap a square, type with the on-screen letters, tap the same square again to switch between Across and Down. Hint fills in a letter when a clue will not come.
Word Scramble: anagrams, one word at a time
Letter tiles in the wrong order. Tap them in the right order to spell the word.
Word Scramble runs in themed rounds of eight, with friendly everyday words rather than obscure ones. Tap a letter you have already placed to take it back. Hint places one letter for you, as often as you like. Because each word is self-contained, it is easy to stop after two and come back later.
Word Groups: the thinking one
Sixteen words on the board. Four of them share something. Find that group, then the next, until all four are done.
Word Groups is the hardest of the five and the most satisfying when it clicks, because the connection is usually a category you know perfectly well but have not thought of yet. No daily limit, so you can play as many boards as you like.
Hangman: the one everybody already knows
Hangman needs no explanation and no instructions. Guess letters, fill in the word, six wrong guesses allowed.
Where the crossword and the word search came from
The first crossword was printed in December 1913, in the New York World newspaper, made by a journalist named Arthur Wynne. His grid was diamond-shaped with no shaded squares, and readers took to it quickly enough that it became a regular weekly feature, with other papers copying it within a few years.
The word search is much newer and its origin is far less well known. It is generally credited to Norman Gibat, who published one in a small want-ad paper in Norman, Oklahoma, in 1968. Puzzle magazines picked up the idea soon after, and within a decade or two it had become the familiar grid of letters with a word list beside it.
Which to start with
- Want to relax: Word Search.
- Want a small daily puzzle: Mini Crossword.
- Want short bursts: Word Scramble.
- Want a proper think: Word Groups.
- Want something familiar: Hangman.
All five are on the word games page. Several also print in large type if you would rather do them on paper.
If numbers appeal more than letters, the brain and logic puzzles page has Sudoku, Nonogram and a fresh Daily Sudoku every morning.