Real word lovers can take a tough challenge any time they want with this clever, solitary, and scratch-off version of Hangman. Here’s how it goes: each page features one puzzle, and each puzzle has the 26 letters of the alphabet accompanied by silver circles to scratch off. Choose a letter, give it a rub (just like a lottery ticket), and see if it’s in the puzzle, and where. But watch out: six misses and you’re hanged!

Lovers of Scrabble® and other language-based games will boost their chances to win with these huge, incredibly thorough word lists. Study them to increase your vocabulary, especially of words with hard-to-use “J,” “Q,” “X,” and “Z,” to understand the different letter combinations that frequently come up, and to get more “hooks,” those letters that can extend words already on the board for extra points. There’s a “cheat sheet” that includes 2 and 3 letter words and their hooks, vowel dumps, and more. Load up on vowel-heavy words, including ones with multiple “I”s and “U”s. Find out which short words don’t take S endings, or which finish in a surprise “S.” Get the best of the bingos, as well as alphagrams. The introduction comes from World Scrabble® Champion Brian Cappelletto.

The first book in a series featuring characters from the D&D core rules.

Featuring the iconic characters that appeared throughout the latest edition of the D&D game, this new series will attract new players and readers to the various worlds featured in the Wizards of the Coast book publishing line. The already familiar characters and D&D-related content will also make this series very approachable to current players.

Anagram loops, mixagrams, pentads, and phrase forays: if you love wordplay, these intriguing puzzles are better than crosswords! They don't have those awful, never-before-heard words meant just to trip you up. And 7 out of these 10 puzzles have no clues at all! You complete them by doing anagrams or by using the three or four letters provided to get you started. Begin with the simplest and make your way up the ladder to the hardest and trickiest. Split decisions have letter pairs in a grid, surrounded by empty squares. Each answer consists of a pair of words that share the letters that should be entered in those squares. For example: Go two by two to complete miniature crisscross puzzles: the vowels are there, but you have to add the correct consonants. Mixagrams have a five- and a four-letter word on each line; their letters have been mixed together, but their order is unchanged--just like this: D A R I U N V E T = DRIVE AUNT It's hours and hours of braintwisting! 96 pages, 63 b/w illus., 5 3/8 x 8 1/4.

There has never been a better time for codes and cryptograms. With the phenomenal success of The Da Vinci Code, cryptology has reached a mainstream audience. For thousands of years the code makers and code breakers have battled for possession of vital secrets. This book contains many of the ingenious codes that have been weapons in that ongoing conflict. It gives readers an inside look at some of history's most groundbreaking codes—by everyone from Caesar and Leonardo to Norman Schwarzkopf—detailing how each code was constructed and how it was used. With one hundred illustrations and seventy-five messages for readers to decipher, The Cryptogram Challenge is both instructive and entertaining, offering readers of all ability levels a chance to test their knowledge of code cracking, and an invaluable insight into some of the greatest written languages in history.