As you’ll know from Coca Cola’s televised fever dream (and, like, calendars), the holidays are comin’. However you celebrate, two things are pretty much guaranteed over the holidays: board games and flamboyant gas.
I think board games are a wonderful thing – conduits to incredible moments of deep connection and hysterics with friends and family. Paradoxically, they’re also a superb tool for busying irritating relatives so you can avoid conversation altogether.
Beyond all that, board games – and wordy ones in particular – have a brilliantly underrated role in helping supercharge writers’ creativity.
As a superfan of games and words, I’m perfectly placed to tell you why word games are so great for us writers.
The first reason is to do with the magic of ‘flow’, that psychological state that games famously induce.
When we’re in flow, we are totally immersed in the task at hand. We’re not worried about the anonymous menagerie in our doc, waiting to savage our once-perfect copy. Or that irrational pitch deadline. Our worldly woes vanish and time loses all meaning like a clock in a blender. This flow state is proven to boost creativity, happiness and emotional regulation.
But my favourite flow factoid is that people also report being more creative the day after a flow state. So playing games and getting our flow on simultaneously helps us forget work and be better at it. This ain’t sorcery, it’s psychology.
Another thing game-play helps us with is our playfulness – as humans and as writers.
I take play deadly seriously (you should see my straining board game shelves), and it helps the work. I’m like a cheeky corporate sprite, prancing from deck to doc, weaving play into my work wherever I can. Heeding the call of a silly idea and seeing where it will take me. Gamifying a TOV training session. Or using words in wild, weird and yet still utterly commercial (for any future clients reading) ways.
This playfulness is not to be sniffed at. Because in the age of AI word-chunder, playful copy is a sort of activism. There’s nothing quite like the hot fizz of satisfaction, the thrilling buzz of revenge, when you make up a word, or use some oddball phrasing you know AI couldn’t (yet) fathom in its wildest, finger-filled robo-dreams.
Lastly but not leastly, games keep your word-marriage fresh. Wordplay for the sheer fun of it, instead of on demand like a circus creature with a Macbook, reminds you why you fell in love with words in the first place. Because they’re bloody gorgeous. (Depending on which way you arrange them. Results may vary.)
So here are the word games I demand you try, and why they’re extra-brilliant for writers.
Just One
How can one word cause a neighbour-bothering ruckus? I’ll tell you how.
How it works:
All players except one (the guesser) view the mystery word card. They then have to secretly write a one-word clue (yes, ‘just one’) on their little wipe-clean easel to get the active player to guess the right word. Here’s the peril: if any of you write the same clue on your easel, both are cancelled out, making it infinitely harder for the poor guesser to deduce the answer from the remaining clues.
Why it rocks for writers:
This game demands that you embody your inner Wordhippo (IYK… who am I kidding? You know) and choose more unexpected word choices. Which is a pretty perfect metaphor for what almost all of us are trying to do with our copy: help brand A not sound the same as competitor brand B, otherwise they’ll cancel each other out. This is a riotous, screeching hit with everyone we’ve ever played it with, from kids to grandparents. They all go on to buy a copy for themselves and gift copies to multiple others.
And another thing…
This won a prestigious Spiel des Jahres (game of the year) award – basically the Cannes Lions of tabletop gaming.
Ransom Notes
This ridiculous word game doubles as a laughter-based ab workout. Value for money, in spades.
How it works:
Players are given a prompt and must compete to create the funniest or most convincing sentence using a bunch of random words. The resulting sentences are usually barely comprehensible, absurd and hilarious. A different player is the judge each time, and they award points to the best attempt in their opinion... You’ll need to have a classy rejection face, because it stings when your (hilarious, genius) word combos get overlooked by our own (former, dumb) friends. I’m over it. I’m fine.
Why it rocks for writers:
This game helps you loosen up. Get over yourself. It’s impossible to write something grammatically correct, so it forces you to lean into the daft, abstract and poetic. Which can help spark a bit of that out-of-box thinkery in your 9-5. Mainly, though, cajoling your magnet word-soup into some form of coherence is deeply satisfying, especially for writers.
And another thing…
Players arrange their words on tiny magnetic boards, which *should* thrill your inner child, if the two of you are still in touch.
Codenames
Yes yes, you’ve probably heard of this one. But read on to find out why it’s a super game to strengthen your writing prowess.
How it works:
Each team is made up of one Spymaster and a bunch of field operatives, all looking at the same 5x5 grid of word cards representing secret agent code names. Spymasters give one-word clues to help their team guess the correct spy names, while avoiding words belonging to the other team. And avoiding the ‘assassin’ word, which ends the game immediately. The goal is to guess all of your team’s words first, ideally giving clues that link multiple words so your team can correctly guess multiple spies in one fell swoop.
Why it rocks for writers:
This game helps you flex and hone those brilliant link-making skills writer’s naturally possess. What’s that one magic word that could link several cards? The game also helps you remember your audience (i.e. teammates), always. That might mean mean giving in-jokes as clues – something only your team would get – which is intensely bonding and euphoric when they intuit your clue correctly. It gets a smidge admin-heavy when they guess badly and you need to usher them swiftly and silently out of your house and ex-communicate them. But the pure joy of a game played well? Worth. The. Risk.
And another thing…
This is another winner of those Cannes-Lions-for-board-games I mentioned, so you know it’s gonna be a good’un.
Gemma Strang is way nicer to work with than she is to play word games with. A freelance Copy and Creative Specialist based in the UK, she’s worked with brands like Netflix, ASOS, Tesco and Yoto. She specializes in copy, brand positioning, and tone of voice, and was recently Highly Commended for Brand Copywriting at the WIM Awards. Gemma also holds a Creative Writing Masters, which explains her immense comfort writing in the third person. It honestly isn’t awkward at all.
As you’ll know from Coca Cola’s televised fever dream (and, like, calendars), the holidays are comin’. However you celebrate, two things are pretty much guaranteed over the holidays: board games and flamboyant gas.
I think board games are a wonderful thing – conduits to incredible moments of deep connection and hysterics with friends and family. Paradoxically, they’re also a superb tool for busying irritating relatives so you can avoid conversation altogether.
Beyond all that, board games – and wordy ones in particular – have a brilliantly underrated role in helping supercharge writers’ creativity.
As a superfan of games and words, I’m perfectly placed to tell you why word games are so great for us writers.
The first reason is to do with the magic of ‘flow’, that psychological state that games famously induce.
When we’re in flow, we are totally immersed in the task at hand. We’re not worried about the anonymous menagerie in our doc, waiting to savage our once-perfect copy. Or that irrational pitch deadline. Our worldly woes vanish and time loses all meaning like a clock in a blender. This flow state is proven to boost creativity, happiness and emotional regulation.
But my favourite flow factoid is that people also report being more creative the day after a flow state. So playing games and getting our flow on simultaneously helps us forget work and be better at it. This ain’t sorcery, it’s psychology.
Another thing game-play helps us with is our playfulness – as humans and as writers.
I take play deadly seriously (you should see my straining board game shelves), and it helps the work. I’m like a cheeky corporate sprite, prancing from deck to doc, weaving play into my work wherever I can. Heeding the call of a silly idea and seeing where it will take me. Gamifying a TOV training session. Or using words in wild, weird and yet still utterly commercial (for any future clients reading) ways.
This playfulness is not to be sniffed at. Because in the age of AI word-chunder, playful copy is a sort of activism. There’s nothing quite like the hot fizz of satisfaction, the thrilling buzz of revenge, when you make up a word, or use some oddball phrasing you know AI couldn’t (yet) fathom in its wildest, finger-filled robo-dreams.
Lastly but not leastly, games keep your word-marriage fresh. Wordplay for the sheer fun of it, instead of on demand like a circus creature with a Macbook, reminds you why you fell in love with words in the first place. Because they’re bloody gorgeous. (Depending on which way you arrange them. Results may vary.)
So here are the word games I demand you try, and why they’re extra-brilliant for writers.
Just One
How can one word cause a neighbour-bothering ruckus? I’ll tell you how.
How it works:
All players except one (the guesser) view the mystery word card. They then have to secretly write a one-word clue (yes, ‘just one’) on their little wipe-clean easel to get the active player to guess the right word. Here’s the peril: if any of you write the same clue on your easel, both are cancelled out, making it infinitely harder for the poor guesser to deduce the answer from the remaining clues.
Why it rocks for writers:
This game demands that you embody your inner Wordhippo (IYK… who am I kidding? You know) and choose more unexpected word choices. Which is a pretty perfect metaphor for what almost all of us are trying to do with our copy: help brand A not sound the same as competitor brand B, otherwise they’ll cancel each other out. This is a riotous, screeching hit with everyone we’ve ever played it with, from kids to grandparents. They all go on to buy a copy for themselves and gift copies to multiple others.
And another thing…
This won a prestigious Spiel des Jahres (game of the year) award – basically the Cannes Lions of tabletop gaming.
Ransom Notes
This ridiculous word game doubles as a laughter-based ab workout. Value for money, in spades.
How it works:
Players are given a prompt and must compete to create the funniest or most convincing sentence using a bunch of random words. The resulting sentences are usually barely comprehensible, absurd and hilarious. A different player is the judge each time, and they award points to the best attempt in their opinion... You’ll need to have a classy rejection face, because it stings when your (hilarious, genius) word combos get overlooked by our own (former, dumb) friends. I’m over it. I’m fine.
Why it rocks for writers:
This game helps you loosen up. Get over yourself. It’s impossible to write something grammatically correct, so it forces you to lean into the daft, abstract and poetic. Which can help spark a bit of that out-of-box thinkery in your 9-5. Mainly, though, cajoling your magnet word-soup into some form of coherence is deeply satisfying, especially for writers.
And another thing…
Players arrange their words on tiny magnetic boards, which *should* thrill your inner child, if the two of you are still in touch.
Codenames
Yes yes, you’ve probably heard of this one. But read on to find out why it’s a super game to strengthen your writing prowess.
How it works:
Each team is made up of one Spymaster and a bunch of field operatives, all looking at the same 5x5 grid of word cards representing secret agent code names. Spymasters give one-word clues to help their team guess the correct spy names, while avoiding words belonging to the other team. And avoiding the ‘assassin’ word, which ends the game immediately. The goal is to guess all of your team’s words first, ideally giving clues that link multiple words so your team can correctly guess multiple spies in one fell swoop.
Why it rocks for writers:
This game helps you flex and hone those brilliant link-making skills writer’s naturally possess. What’s that one magic word that could link several cards? The game also helps you remember your audience (i.e. teammates), always. That might mean mean giving in-jokes as clues – something only your team would get – which is intensely bonding and euphoric when they intuit your clue correctly. It gets a smidge admin-heavy when they guess badly and you need to usher them swiftly and silently out of your house and ex-communicate them. But the pure joy of a game played well? Worth. The. Risk.
And another thing…
This is another winner of those Cannes-Lions-for-board-games I mentioned, so you know it’s gonna be a good’un.
Gemma Strang is way nicer to work with than she is to play word games with. A freelance Copy and Creative Specialist based in the UK, she’s worked with brands like Netflix, ASOS, Tesco and Yoto. She specializes in copy, brand positioning, and tone of voice, and was recently Highly Commended for Brand Copywriting at the WIM Awards. Gemma also holds a Creative Writing Masters, which explains her immense comfort writing in the third person. It honestly isn’t awkward at all.
Further Reading
