Roger Smith
Word Chain - a pencil and paper word game
The idea is to create a word chain in which the last twoletters of a word form the first two letters of the next.
Like this:
metal>>almost>>stone>>nest>>stare>>reverse>>seat>>
...and so on.
Word chains help students with their spelling because they
encourage them to recognize possible letter combinations.
You score 2 points for each letter used
If you have to find a word from a dictionary
you only score 1 point for each letter.
You can challenge the previous player if you think he can't
follow his own word. If you make a successful challenge,
your opponent loses the score for that word and loses his turn.
A typical chain will make the scoring clearer:
| Word | Comments |
| Picture | nominated by Ann. (No score for the first word) |
| replace | Bill didn't use a dictionary so scores double: 14 points |
| celebration | Ann referred to the dictionary to find this word so only scores single points: 11 |
| onion | Bill scores 10 |
| once | Ann scores 8 |
| cemetery | Bill scores 16. But Ann challenges the word "cemetery" - she believes he doesn't know a word starting ry-. She's right, so Bill loses his 16 points and his turn. She can replace cemetery with another ce- word. |
| certain | Ann scores 14 |