![]() Riddles Language associations Lateral thinking problems. We’ve gathered 45 examples of brain teasers for kids with answers, organized by category: People of all ages can indulge in these playful - yet challenging - activities.Īnd some examples of when teachers might want to use brain teasers are on a bulletin board in the classroom, as a partnered activity to start a new concept or lesson, or during a rainy day indoor recess box. How do you gain their full attention while teaching the skills they need to succeed? How do you turn tough and intimidating concepts into fun, entertaining lessons that actually spark life in the classroom?īrain teasers for kids are a great form of game-based learning that not only entertain children but also inspire some creative thought in the classroom. 4, 1978.Sometimes keeping your students engaged during a (long) school day feels like a losing battle. A Bibliography of Recreational Mathematics, v. Wordplay: Reflections on the Art of Ambigrams, 1992. Language on Vacation: An Olio of Orthographic Oddities, 1965. Willard Espy calls a word that looks the same upside down an invertogram and Schaaf calls a number like that strobogrammatic. AmbigramĪ term coined by John Langdon for words made to look the same when inverted with the help of calligraphy. ![]() ![]() The opposite of an aptigram, these words or phrases form antonyms when rearranged.Įxamples: violence - nice, love funeral - real fun. Others call these particularly apt anagrams “aptigrams.” For example: Villainousness is an anagram of “an evil soul’s sin.” 10. Grambs uses the word transposal in this general sense, and anagram more narrowly to mean a transposal of letters resulting in synonymous term. The English word anagram goes back to 1589. AnagramĪ word or phrase formed by rearranging the letters of another word or phrase. Rebus has been used in English since 1605, when William Camden wrote, “They which lackt wit to expresse their conceit in speech, did vse to depaint it out … in pictures, which they called Rebus.” Popular in autograph books and on vanity license plates, rebuses include such classics as:ĭavid Grambs uses this term for a word or name made up of two identical parts, such as so-so, tom-tom or Pago Pago. RebusĪ representation of words with pictures, letter names, or symbols that suggest the sound of the words. Imagine an entire novel without he, she, the, or the past tense marker –ed. Scott Fitzgerald’s Gatsby as great, but in 1939 Ernest Vincent Wright produced the phenomenal Gadsby: A Story of Over 50,000 Words Without Using the letter “E,” a scarcely believable achievement considering that “E” is the most common letter in English. LipogramĪ written work composed of words chosen to avoid the use of one or more letters. Ouch! That mama roo is going to need a pouchlift after carrying around that brood! 6. This refers to a word carrying another word within it (without transposing any letters).Įxample: encourage contains courage, cog, cur, urge, core, cure, nag, rag, age, nor, rage and enrage. Here’s a semordnilap dieters can relate to: Stressed is desserts backwards. (Do you get the feeling that fans of word play love to make up words?) Semordnilaps (coined by Martin Gardner in 1961) are also known as backronyms, volvograms, heteropalindromes, semi-palindromes, half-palindromes, reversgrams, mynoretehs, recurrent palindromes, reversible anagrams, word reversals, or anadromes. ![]() SemordnilapĪ word or name that spells a different word backwards (notice what semordnilap spells backwards). Need more palindromes? Find a huge stash here. PalindromeĪ word, sentence, or longer written work that reads the same backwards.Įxample: A declaration facetiously attributed to Napoleon, “Able was I ere I saw Elba.” Weird Al Yankovic’s song “Bob” spoofs Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” using a slew of palindromes. You may remember this one from typing class: “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy sleeping dog,” but Willard Espy came up with a shorter and more interesting one: “Bawds jog, flick quartz, vex nymphs.” An abundance of pangrams, using some very obscure words or initials can be found here. PangramĪ phrase or sentence containing all 26 letter of the alphabet (ideally repeating as few letters as possible). IsogramĪ word in which no letter of the alphabet occurs more than once.ĭimitri Borgmann’s longest example: dermatoglyphics, the study of skin markings or patterns on fingers, hands, and feet, and its application, especially in criminology. But what do you call a word that spells another word backwards, or a word that looks the same upside down? When terms for these orthographic puzzlers didn’t exist, logolologists (such as the authors of the books listed below) were happy to invent some. If you love word play, you probably know that a word-or longer piece of writing-that reads the same forward and backward is called a palindrome. ![]()
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