Recently I shared a simple word game for the family called Four Letter Change-Up.

Here’s a slightly more challenging game that’s good to play with older kids.  American author, James Thurber, played this with his friends.

In Ghost, players take turns adding letters to a word fragment, with the goal to avoid being the one to complete an actual word. When a player completes a word, he loses that round of the game and start a new round. Each fragment must be the beginning of an actual word. If you don’t believe the person who just added a letter actually was thinking of a real word, you can challenge her. If she is able to tell you the word she had in mind, you lose the challenge and the round. If she was bluffing and had no word in mind, she loses the challenge and the round.

Scoring is like the game “Horse” where each round lost adds a letter to your name. In this case, Ghost. The first loss gives you a G, the second H, and so on until the first person to spell Ghost loses.

Example:

Round 1:

Sweetanlo says “h” and is thinking of the word hat.

Rummy says “e” and immediately loses that round by making the word “he.”

Round 2:

Rummy says “h”

Pastormac says “u,” thinking of the word hut.

Sweetanlo says “c,” thinking of huckleberry.

Rummy says “h”

Sweetanlo says “I challenge” indicating that she doesn’t believe Rummy has a word in mind.

Rummy says “huchen” (which is a kind of salmon)

Sweetanlo loses the challenge and the round.

And so on.

There are many variations to this game, including the simple idea that 2 or three letter words don’t count, eliminating the possibility of losing when you make such a word. (Round 1 above would not have resulted in Rummy’s loss with this rule).

Ghost is a fun challenging game that requires real thinking and forethought.  Who says spelling practice and vocabulary building can’t be fun?  For parents and kids alike!

Photo: morguefile