Botticelli and Beyond: Over 100 of the World's Best Word Games

Never knew the name of this guessing game until now! Such a great way to pass the time on a road trip, and I have fond memories of playing it back in high school, in the few minutes before the bell rang at the end of French class (merci, Madame Huey!).

rating for Botticelli

I'm not much for the spoken parlor games that make up the first half of the book, but standouts include variations on [boardgame=29888]Ghost[/boardgame] and [i]Kolodny's Game[/i], an inductive along the lines of [boardgame=5217]Eleusis[/boardgame]/[boardgame=6830]Zendo[/boardgame].

The written games in the second half are more my style, including [boardgame=28553]Fictionary[/boardgame] variations, like Fabularly Vocabulary; Foreheads, a [boardgamefamily=11111]headband deduction game[/boardgamefamily]; [boardgame=11821]Jotto[/boardgame], like Mastermind; and some good crossword-style games.

The surprise find for me was [i]Quizl[/i], which turns the familiar game of Battleship into a word hunt.

An entertaining read with a few choice games as well.

This compendium serves as a placeholder for word games without BGG entries of their own.

[i]Balda[/i] is a letters-on-grid game where players add a letter, and then score a word that forms using the new letter. One point per letter in the scored word, and legal words are restricted to avoid plurals, etc. A pretty good interactive puzzle-game that's available on yucata.

Great read! Huge variety of games! There are even suggest games for kinds of wordplay that are more like activities! Already outdated considering the bulk of word gaming happens on smartphones, but the author admits that right in the introduction.