Anagram Clues
| No. of Players: | 2+ |
| Type of Game: | spoken |
| What you need: | nothing |
Goal
To guess a word from partial anagrams of that word.
How to play
The gamemaster thinks of a word with seven or more letters which are all different from each other. The other players are then given an anagram clue to this secret word: a three-letter word made of three of its seven letters. Players each get one chance to guess the secret word. A correct guess earns that player three points and the role of the gamemaster falls to him for the next round. If no player guesses correctly, the gamemaster gives another anagram clue to the secret word, but this time it is four letters in length. A correct guess is now worth two points and that player becomes the next gamemaster. If no one guesses correctly, the gamemaster gives a third anagram clue consisting of five letters of the secret word. A correct guess is now worth just one point and that player becomes the next gamemaster. If no one guesses correctly, the gamemaster gets one point and the gamemaster role automatically defaults to another player. After a sufficient number of rounds have been played, the points are added up and an overall winner is declared. If there are just two players, they can alternate being the gamemaster. Game difficulty can be adjusted by choosing secret words with more than or less than seven letters.
Example
Alaina thinks of a word with seven non-repeating letters.
| Alaina: | The three-letter anagram clue is war. |
| Brooks: | Is the secret word rikshaw? |
| Chase: | Rawhide? |
| Dax: | Runways? |
| Alaina: | Nope. The four-letter anagram clue is barn. |
| Brooks: | Turbans? |
| Chase: | Vibrant? |
| Dax: | Bankers? |
| Alaina: | Nope. The final anagram clue, with five letters, is brown. |
| Brooks: | So the secret word contains the letters W, A, R, B, N, and O. Ah... um... I don't know. |
| Chase: | I don't know either. |
| Dax: | Rainbow? |
| Alaina: | Correct! It's RAINBOW. |
Dax scores 1 point and gets to choose the next secret word.
Did you know?
Your family may call her grandma, granny, or gram. But these nicknames are relatively recent, historically speaking. The full word 'grandmother' actually dates back to 1375–1425. It derives from the Old English ealde mōdor, literally meaning 'old mother.'
The origin of 'great-grandmother' (þridde mōdor, or 'third mother') is slightly more recent. It was first recorded around 1520–30. Incidently, the prefix grand- is used to refer to a person who is one generation removed, and the prefix great- indicates yet another generation.
Following this convention, 'great-great-grandmother' would be fēowerþe mōdor (fourth mother) and great-great-great-grandmother would be fīfte mōdor (fifth mother). Given that the average person lived just 35 years in the Early Middle Ages when Old English was spoken, few people back then would have had use for these terms. Other than speaking of mothers who were long since gone, of course.
However, that is not true today. There have been a few cases of single families with six generations alive at the same time. And even one family with seven. This occurred with the birth of Christopher John Bollig on January 21, 1989, which made Augusta Bunge Pagel a very-much-alive sixte mōdor – that is, a great-great-great-great-grandmother!
According to Guinness World Records, Augusta was born on October 13, 1879 in Tonawanda, New York. This made her 109 years, 3 months, and 8 days old at the time. Followed by her daughter Ella Sabin (aged 89), her granddaughter Anna Wendlandt (70), her great-granddaughter Betty Wolter (52), her great-great-granddaughter Debra Bollig (33), her great-great-great-granddaughter Lori Bollig (15), and her great-great-great-great-grandson Christopher.
Augusta died on May 18, 1989 in Medford, Wisconsin – no doubt quite proud of her amazing family!
In case you're wondering, the images under the title of this word game form a rebus puzzle:
ANA + GRAM + CLUES = ANAGRAM CLUES
