Like its predecessor, Onomastica 2, the puzzle platformer/interactive art piece by mif2000, takes place in a world where words and objects are interchangeable. And also, like the original, it is whimsical, clever, and over way too quickly. Still, it's such a fun little art deco world to play around in, that players who like minding their words won't mind too much.

This clever escape game by Gatamari is themed around spelling English words to make things happen around the room, with puzzles that are challenging whether they're about wordplay or not.

SimCity meets Scribblenauts in the unique strategy building sim Lexicopolis: A-B-City! From "apartment" to "zoo," design your perfect town while literally earning points for originality. With over 300 words programmed into the game, there's plenty of fun to be had!

Help Grimm rid the dungeons of baddies in this charming word game. Use the power of spelling (and your scythe) to attack creatures who retaliate in many different ways. Earn gems to upgrade your abilities before taking on the bosses. Will words win out? It's up to you!

Marty Sears' popular combination of anagrams, block-sliding, hilarious animations, and hair-pulling difficulty has become a quadrilogy with Blocks With Letters On 4. It's as punishing and as hilarious as it's ever been, and this time, the background is green!

Want a word game? Want a SWANKY word game? Then check out the short but stylish title from mif2000 that sends you running through a world of words you can combine to change the landscape and their meaning!

Moon Logic Enterprised has recovered several stone tablets from a tower just discovered on what was thought a lifeless planet. It's up to you, a professor of xenolinguistices, to translate the text and unlock alien mysteries, in Stranger Than Fiction by Stuart Madafiglio. A puzzle rumination on life, the universe, and everything, the game's cryptogram challenges are rather on the easy side, but overall it is a meditative, original, and quietly satisfying peak into another world.

Polish your pop culture recognition and your eyeballs in this latest installment of Nitrome's popular word trivia series! Identify more tiny characters, real or fictional, as they file on stage... and no, it turns out "that one guy who was in the show on channel 6, you know, with the pants" isn't a valid answer.

You've got bubbles. You've got letters. And you've got a powerful need to spell some words, all while swapping orbs against the clock. That's the basic premise of Burble and Burble Select, a word game meets marble popper from Charlie Dog Games. Using the power of your hand, drag and drop letter bubbles to switch position with other bubbles, all while the chain of orbs slowly advances down the track. Your goal is to spell four letter and above words, eliminating bubbles and postponing your Level Lost! for another day. Act fast and hope your vocabulary is as flexible as it is comprehensive!

We all love metroidvanias! But would we still love them if, instead of controlling a scifi bounty hunter, or a badass vampire slayer, we played as the alphabet? Answer: Yes! And ASCIIvania, an exploration platformer by Gharding3, is the proof! ASCIIvania is clearer documentation, a map screen and a mute button away from excellence, but its still a fun time.

Witherworth University Professor Nathaniel Paynuss believes that proof-reading is meant to be a weapon to get back at those snotty collegiate brats making fun of him on "The Face Book". In First Person Tutor, an "educational" arcade game developed by Big Blue Boo Labs for the 7 Day FPS Game Jam, you play the role of beleaguered TA to the evil professor, held captive by a huge pile of student debt. You have a stack of papers to mark, and a score of professorial grudges Paynuss would be happy to settle by GPA proxy. You know what you have to do. The unique premise of First Person Tutor should appeal many on the internet, but it's very polished for a Game Jam work. The dark satire of college politics should give it wider appeal.

This little girl named Mabel is stuck in a cavern and her only means of escaping is combining letter creatures into words and use them as platforms to climb out. A cross between a platformer and a word puzzle game that gives you the challenge of navigating platforms carefully while making intricate words for as many points as possible. Your high score and hopes of surviving all hinge on your extensive vocabulary knowledge and quick thinking in this game by Joel Esler.

This little girl named Mabel is stuck in a cavern and her only means of escaping is combining letter creatures into words and use them as platforms to climb out. A cross between a platformer and a word puzzle game that gives you the challenge of navigating platforms carefully while making intricate words for as many points as possible. Your high score and hopes of surviving all hinge on your extensive vocabulary knowledge and quick thinking in this game by Joel Esler.

Remarkable as the first collaboration between fans and game developer, Nitrome, this pop culture trivia games delivers clues via cable car in the form of teeny tiny, yet surprisingly detailed, characters. Hangman-style letter blanks also help out as you attempt to name, and correctly spell, the famous figures from fiction, movies, music, television and more. When you think you know it, use your keyboard to type it in and bask in the fanfare while the next VIP is delivered to the stage via cable car. Fanboys and fangirls, rejoice!

Proke, a word game developed by Peter Hastings, is all about vocabulary building... literally! The goal of it is to build a mighty tower to the heavens, and your only tools are quick thinking and linguistic fortitude. While racing the clock, type a word that has the designated prefix or suffix, or for extra height, both. The faster you type, the higher you'll build. Extra points can be scored for typing the letters that appear in Bonus Bubbles, or doing combos of words with same prefix/suffix. Proke is a light kind of game, but it's very addictive.

Alone. A word that has both good and bad connotations. For Matt Rix' Ludum Dare entry, it's a goal. In The Word Alone, you are given a Boggle-esque board where you are tasked to eliminate all the other letters to leave just 'A', 'L', 'O', 'N' and 'E'. Do you have the word and spatial genius to accomplish this?

I have to admit, if I was ever sucked into a Tron-like computer world, I don't know if I would be able to handle the games they would force me to play. Since getting my motorcycle, I think I could manage a draw in light-cycles, but Deadly Discs? Solar Sailor? Brawls at the End of Line club? I think I'd be derezzed pretty quickly. On the other hand, should the Master Computer challenge me to a game of hangman, I think I could take him. Such is the scenario presented by Langman, the new unity platforming word game from Von Lehe Creative.

Buried in the dirt or sitting in the open pathways are letters or bones, simply run across them (or dig across them) to pick them up. Spell words to earn bones to buy bonuses and to move further in the game. Simple to learn with a lot of vocabulary complexity to be found, Word Up Dog! is casual gameplay that can suck you in and give you hours and hours of enjoyment. This fun, amusing, challenging game of spelling is entertainment for a wide range of ages, from those youngsters who want to improve their mad spellin' skillz to the older folks who enjoy a vocabulary challenge.

Word Bubbles is a word game of a different sort, exercising your brain as you devour round after round of word-guessing goodness. Enter as many words that begin with the set of letters given at the beginning. Float the numbered bubbles to the top and you'll earn a star!

Moxie 2 is a solitaire puzzle game where you try to create words by modifying or adding letters to existing words. Each letter has a different point value, and larger words earn you more points. Earn the most points by forming special Moxie words, based on animals, vegetables, or minerals. A simple concept with surprisingly deep, addictive play.

The third installment in the block-manipulating, anagram-solving, funny-bone-tickling series, the first installment of which was voted one of the Best Games of 2008 by JIG. After nearly two sad blockless years, Marty Sears is back with all the fiendish brain-teasing action and absurd animations fans have come to expect. And if you're new to BWLO, you'll find this even more of a treat... and even more of a punishment. A punishing treat? Anyway, yay!

WayWords, TwistedSimple's new word puzzle release, is one part Boggle, two parts Magic Square, and three parts playing around with alphabet blocks. It has the sort of aesthetic that wouldn't be out of place between the Crossword and the Sudoku in your daily newspaper, and gameplay that would fit right in between Scrabble and Upwords in the ol' game cabinet.

Lateral is a word game that pushes you to think outside the box. Try and guess the hidden word or phrase by looking at the words it's connected to. Cat plus fish equals catfish, but rarely will your task be that simple!

It's word game meets physics puzzle in Prose and Motion, a unique game by DeeperBeige. Click and drag letters to the starting point on each stage, carefully arranging them one by one in a neat little row. Spell a word to move on to the next level, spell the correct word and you're even more awesome!

Grab your magnifying glasses and reading glasses, it's time to become a dictionary detective! Or a lexicon lawman. Or a syllable sleuth. Perhaps an alliterative agent? Wordspector is a fast-paced word game that will have you scrambling to find the secret word using deduction and a bit of luck.

Do morphemes of prodigious extensiveness accelerate your cardiovascular thingamajig? If so, why not try Word Machine, a word construction game from Pascal Le Merrer?

What do you do when a rival inventor shows up with his band of mechanical spiders to steal the blueprints made by a fantastic machine that runs on language? Why, you strap on your vocabulary and feed the biggest, meatiest words you can think of into the machine so it can blast the intruders with a cannon! No, don't stop to think about machines using words for fuel, or how exactly one might strap their vocabulary to anything, you've got shooting to do!

Qbox is a neat little variation of a Jumble or a crossword, in which you try to decipher famous quotes from one of three historical eras. These quotes are laid out in a grid, and the letters have been scrambled within their respective columns only. Swap letters in the same column and when the correct word is formed it will lock into place.

You are presented with a series of letter tiles, scrambled into gibberish. Your job is to swap tiles two at a time, hopefully uncovering the hidden palindrome. At first, most of the words will induce some eye-rolling, as you'll get "ott" and have a hint of "a small child". But watch out when the game starts flipping open other languages' dictionaries to find some truly heinous fare.

The new game from Gregory Weir is an unabashedly highbrow and experimental platform game, where the ground is made up of literature. Try to touch as many words as you can, as prose by H.P. Lovecraft, T.S. Eliot and others stretches out before you. It's interesting enough just to be forced to read by a platform game, but the real treat is all the visual embellishments.

Tonypa's new word game asks you to make as many unique words as you can within a string of seven letters. The difference between this and any number of Scrabble variants is that you can't rearrange the letters. Instead, you place them one at a time somewhere in the row. The catch? You can't use any word more than once. Good luck staying in the game as your vocabulary dwindles!

Forget your power-ups and your super-combos. It's time to do your best flat-foot impersonation and hit the street after your target in this unique typing game, where your wheels only turn as fast as your fingers fly. Featuring a snarky sense of humour and a noir atmosphere on top of some of the craziest dialogue around, The Red Herring Chase is a brilliant little gem of a game that may or may not break all your fingers.

The unassuming DeepLeap might well be one of the best pure word games to grace the internet in quite a while. Javascript guru John Resig combines the basic gameplay of Scrabble with the sweat-inducing intensity of Text Twist in this fast-paced word-forming game.

Globetrotter is as simple as it gets. You're given a map and you're given a location, and you must click on where you think that location is on the map. Sure, this is easy if you're looking for New York, United States or London, England, but good luck with Tunis, Tunisia on your first go, and believe me, Australia can be trickier than you may think.

Sentences is a word game by Pictogame that allows you to recreate famous sayings, combining familiar game elements into one fast-paced language-fest. Each of ten rounds tests your speed-typing, word-rearranging, or Hangman skills. There are 200 quotes to unlock, and each round has a bronze, silver, and gold medal score that require tremendous accuracy and speed. It's simple to play, tricky to master, and has a little bit of an educational edge. Give it a try.

"What good is Magnetic Poetry if you can't be the best at it?" you might be saying. Well, wonder no more, for Paul Preece and David Scott (AKA the Casual Collective) have just the thing: Farragomate! Compete against up to 9 others to make the best sentence out of a given pool of words.

Blocks With Letters On is a game that seamlessly combines language riddles with physical tile puzzles. Each level provides you with an assortment of blocks (with letters on), and you must find a way to position them in the supplied pink spaces so that they spell an English word. This sequel's difficulty picks up at the point where the last game left off. Which was already freakishly difficult. Be warned.

An anagram puzzle game from Martin Sears, presented with the distinct flavor of British educational programming. Don't be fooled by the charming hand-drawn appearance and the curiously twisted vignettes between levels; don't worry if the first few levels seem too basic. This turns into a serious brain-twister.

Seek Ver. 0 tasks you with protecting your column of hearts from a stampede of letters sliding in from the right. As letters appear on the conveyor belt, you must quickly find and click the matching letter in the grid below. But if you are too slow, or if you click the wrong letter, one of your hearts will be wiped out.

A game that combines wordplay with Sokoban-style block pushing? Are they mad?!? Arrange blocks with letters to form words by sliding them into place. Luckily, Alphabox recognizes solutions apart from the one intended, so sometimes you can get creative and mix the letters around, saving a few moves. A level editor extends the replay value of this innovative puzzler.

Countdown is based on one of the longest running game shows in the world, and this Flash game does a good job of staying true to the original game on TV. The game features two contestants battling it out in a game of letters, numbers, and "the crucial Countdown Conundrum." Each round is played against a giant 30-second clock, while the famous Countdown music plays. If you're a game show fan, don't miss this one.

I think many people who frequent this site would agree: Tonypa is one of our favorite casual game designers. Grow Word, his submission to Casual Gameplay's second competition exhibits many of the characteristics that we have come to love about Tonypa's games: it's elegant, understated, and easy to learn but hard to master.

I've often thought that Jayisgames doesn't have anywhere near enough word games for my liking, and this almost makes up for that lack. This is a quick, clever Flash crossword puzzle from Taro Ito of Gamedesign, who brought us the recently-reviewed White Jigsaw and other addictive favourites of this site (Dice Wars anyone?), and it lives up to his previous standard. If you've a hankering for word puzzles, speak fluent English and have five minutes to spare I think you'll really like this.

Halloween Hangman is a simple, cute, and rather amusing Halloween-themed game of hangman. Choose letters from the tiles on screen and try to guess the mystery word or phrase. Make a wrong choice and the smarty-pants skeleton hanging from a rope will hand you a snide comment or two.

Cyptograma has to be the most appealing interface to a cryptographic puzzle that I have ever seen. The game features quotes and phrases to decrypt from famous people, and are available in either English or Español. Each puzzle is in the form of a simple substitution cipher in which each letter of the phrase is substituted with a symbol. It is up to you to figure out the letter that each symbol corresponds to.

Word Sandwich is a free online Flash game that adds something a little different to the word game genre. The goal of the game is to guess the mystery five-letter word. Simple to play and difficult to master, the game can be highly addictive. Consider yourself warned. The combination of guesswork and alphabetic strategy (with a nice jazzy musical score) grabs you pretty quickly.

Remember the typing game, Letters, that was reviewed here in November? Well, the author, Hannu Pelkonen, has released a very significant addition to the series: Words! Though lacking the power-ups of Letters, Words uses the same slick interface and addictive dynamic high score display that updates your rank in real-time while you play.

Another great word game from East of the Web, this one combines the word finding frenzy of Boggle with the scrambled word anagrams of Jumble. 8 Letters in Search of a Word is a race against the clock to score enough points to move on to the next level. Points are awarded by finding words within an 8-letter anagram, established at the beginning of each level.

Just found this excellent collection of word games created in Flash and published by East of the Web. There are currently eight (8) different games to choose from, and each one offers a unique gameplay experience than usual games in its category. CodeWord blends components of guess-the-word games like Hangman with...

Philip Lenssen was very kind to send word that he has a brand new game added to his collection of Games for the Brain. LetterMaze is a sesquipedalian game in which the player first memorizes the spelling of two long words. Next, a maze is presented within which the mouse is used to simply touch spell the words within the time limit. The game is ...

From Carnegie Mellon University comes this multiplayer game that is simply called: The ESP Game. The game requires you to register and sign in, and then it pairs you up with an anonymous partner for a round of ten images. You have two minutes and thirty seconds (2:30) with which to agree...

Word Pads is a new action word game done in Flash with a tropical theme. Similar to games like WEBoggle, except played as a single-player experience, the object of Word Pads is to form English words to score points by clicking on the lily pads in a race against the clock. Words of 3 or more letters are safe, but words of 4 or more letters only scor...

Jumble.com has launched a play-online section that features daily Jumbles, with a new one added every day. This version of the classic puzzler adds a timer, scoring, and even a hint feature if you really get stumped. Word puzzles are a good way to keep your mind sharp, and to give your fingers a break from all those button-mashing games.

Why is this game so addictive? Is it because it's easy to find at least a couple of words? It certainly can't be because I always end up at the bottom of the scoring list. Click....