Stimulate the Mind: Playing Word Games in Your Head

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A Compilation of Limericks Based on Wordle Words. If you want to finish writing something, you have to actually finish writing something.

As such, it would seem counterintuitive to even suggest playing games. Even if it’s a game that involves words, you might think it’s a bit of a waste of time.

Yet, in this age of distraction and instantaneity, among the many types of offline and online games out there, word games are often regarded as a rare oddity or an old-school novelty. Remember the days of Hangaroo? BookWorm? TextTwist? Now, those types of games are scarce.

However, these kinds of games, although often simple, actually have very positive effects. Through these games, we boost our cognition and our ability to think creatively–which is a very useful thing to have as a would-be writer.

Playing Word Games with Your Head

Through engaging with these word-based challenges, you can stimulate the mind, developing new neural pathways while, at the same time, expanding your vocabulary and adopting a more innovation-focused mindset.

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The relationship between word games and creativity is complicated, but its mutual benefits are nothing to scoff at. Here are just some of the potential skills you can acquire and/or improve upon through playing word games:

• Vocabulary expansion. Word games, especially those that have a competitive element to them (whether it be with others or with yourself), touch upon a vast repository of words. This helps you acquire a richer lexical library from which to take. A larger vocabulary helps you express yourself better in a more precise and more creative manner.
• Pattern recognition. Some word games have setups where you are tasked to identify patterns and relationships between words. This helps you structure your writings more creatively, produce unique metaphors, and generate novel connections.
• Cognitive flexibility. Good word games approach you on specific aspects of linguistic capacity. The best ones engage you on multiple fronts. These games require players to jump between different modes of cognition, helping the brain become more adaptable and more fluid.
• Enhanced memory. A common aspect that word games touch upon is memory. Games by themselves force players to take up strategizes on how to better hold and manipulate information, but in word games, this is made even more apparent.

Stimulate the Mind: Fueling Creativity

Word games don’t usually have only one way of solving them. Word games have multiple possibilities for completion. This prods the mind to reorient itself into taking a more divergent approach to thinking about problems, helping you come up with more avenues for success.

By having more options for action, coupled with a growing lexical library, these games help the mind become an idea-generator. Having more concepts and words with which to express said concepts, more unexpected and innovative connections can be made.

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With the practice and ease of developing unlikely connections, the mind is more—mentally speaking—flexible. This allows it to be looser when it comes to decision-making, loosening up from biased perceptions and conventional thinking.

Lastly, what really helps with your creativity is the fact that word games let you have fun with them. Playfulness is an overlooked part of being creative, but it’s what creates a positive and stimulating outlook in the first place. Without fun, we tend to be more constrained and closed-minded, which is not good for creativity.

Stimulate the Mind: Daily Life

While word games are great and all, it’s impossible to play them all the time. Remember, word games are just one of many avenues to help further your creativity. What’s really important, though, is, in addition to word games, you create a well-paced routine that may include the following:

• Language learning is a perfect way for you to deepen your understanding of your own language, and it is a good practical skill.
• Reading is another source of vocabulary and perspectives.
• Wordplay is the deliberate act of being playful with your words via puns, acrostics, and more.
• Writing is the single best way to practice what you’ve learned.

A Compilation of Limericks Based on Wordle Words

For a great example of how word games elicit the mind to out-of-the-box creations, Marshall S. Flam’s anthology of poetry, Wordle Limerick, which is a compilation of limericks based on Wordle words, is a great place to start.

The link is here to order a copy of the book.