Word Games #1

Word games have exploded in popularity over recent years, boosted in part by claims that they “exercise the brain” and thereby can help forestall the cognitive decline that’s common in ageing. While I expect we’ll be addressing some of those here, my intent with this category is broader.

I’ve been creating my own simple word games for some years now. It was a delight to discover that James Thurber had done the same. One of my favorites is creating homophone combinations that tell a story or create an image. A homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word(s). They might be spelled the same way—in which case the words are also homographs—or not.

Here’s an example of how it works: “A small grove of trees became a refuge for the overworked law enforcement officers”—a cops’ copse.

Coming up with homophones like this is something my mind plays with at idle times; it’s silly fun. The longest non-repeating homophone string I’ve come up with so far is four words. It’ll be shared here at some point; and I’ll have more to say about James Thurber in due course.