FICTION FOCUS
WORD GAMES
When you’re a writer, words matter. Play with them, but use them with care, advises Margaret James
How many readers of this magazine love word games?
Since we are all authors, that will be most of us, I guess?
My sister and I challenge each other daily on WordFeud, which is basically online Scrabble. As for Wordle, though – I don’t dare glance at even the basic version, let alone its more challenging variations such as Dordle and Quordle. I’d be completely hooked and never do anything else for the rest of my day. Or even my life. The traditional crossword puzzle was apparently invented by an Englishman called Arthur Wynne and commercially published for the first time in the USA in 1913. Several of my author friends love crosswords, the more difficult the better, and the central character in Joanna Cannon’s darkly comic bestseller A Tidy Ending is heavily into them, too.