Word Games, Riddles and Logic Tests
Easy English!
By Adrian Wal work
Word Games,
Riddles
and Logic Tests
Tax Your Brain
and Boost Your English
Easy English!
Series Editor
Adrian Wallwork
English for Academics SAS
Pisa, Italy
Easy English is a series of books intended for students and teachers of English as a foreign language.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15586
Adrian Wallwork
Word Games, Riddles and
Logic Tests
Tax Your Brain and Boost Your English
Adrian Wallwork
English for Academics SAS
Pisa, Italy
ISSN
2522-8617
ISSN
2522-8625 (electronic)
Easy English!
ISBN
978-3-319-67240-3 ISBN
978-3-319-67241-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67241-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017963151
© Springer International Publishing AG 2018
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
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Introduction to the Student
What Is Easy English?
Easy English is a series of books to help you learn and revise your English with minimal effort.
There are two main strands of the series. Readers who wish to improve their English by
• reading texts in English that you might well normally read in your own language e.g. word and logic games (this book) personality tests, jokes, word searches.
• doing short exercises to improve specific areas grammar and vocabulary, i.e. the areas that tend to lead to the most mistakes - the aim is just to focus on what you really need rather than overwhelming you with a mass of rules, many of which
may have no practical daily value.
Who Is the Book for?
Anyone, whether a native or non-native speaker of English, who is interested in the English language, word games and logic games.
Which Is the Best Format to Buy this Book in?
Paper, without any doubt. The exercises involve you writing or underlining directly onto the page. With an e-reader this would be much more difficult. However, an
e-book provides a dictionary which will occasionally be useful for you.
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vi
Introduction to the Student
What Level of English Do I Need In Order
to Benefit from this Book?
The level of vocabulary required to understand this book is the highest of all the books in the series. This means that you may come across words that you may not
be familiar with. This is because the vocabulary is authentic English - you are reading the real thing! In any case, the difficulty of some of the vocabulary is compen-sated for by the shortness of the texts and the simplicity in understanding the point of the exercises.
If your level is intermediate and above, then you should be able to do most of the exercises, though not necessarily all the questions within an exercise.
If you need a dictionary to check the meanings of some words, two good online
dictionaries are:
• Word Reference
• The Cambridge Online Learners Dictionary
Alternatively, if you are using an e-reader, you can use the dictionary provided by the e-reader.
What Kind of Exercises this Book Contain?
This book contains various exercises connected with some of the more unusual
aspects of the English language. There is also has a series of mathematical/logic and lateral thinking games.
The book contains an incredible variety of exercises on areas of the English language that are not normally found for non-native speakers. Thus in many cases you will be exposed to games that typically a native English speaker would do. I have merely tried to adapt these games into a manageable format, but the actual vocabulary contained has not been changed. This is authentic English!
Where Are the Keys to the Exercises?
The keys to the exercises from one chapter are all grouped together at the end
of that chapter. The keys all have a light grey background.
For ease of comprehension, keys often contain the full text of the exercise.
The idea is that also you will thus be able to re-read the exercise along with its answer, and this should help you to revise and remember the vocabulary contained in the exercise.
Introduction to the Student
vii
How Do the Exercises Work?
Below is an explanation how each of exercise type in Chapters 2-12 works. For full details see Chapter 1.
Ambiguous Headlines
You will read a series of headlines from newspapers. These headlines are ambigu-
ous which means they have more than one meaning.
Task: Understand the ambiguity
Anagrams
In this exercise you will see a word or set of words in one column, and another set of words in the other column.
The words in the second column are anagrams of the words in the first column. The words in the second column also act as a (humorous) description, explanation or
comment on the the first words.
Example: astronomer - moon starer
Moon starer uses the same letters as astronomer, but also describes the work of an astronomer who is someone who stares (in this case, looks at through a telescope) at the moon.
Task: To find a connection between the first column and the second column.
Funny Book Titles
You will be presented with five books titles and five authors. The authors’ names need to be spoken aloud in a rapid manner for you to be able to understand their meaning.
Task: Match the titles with authors.
Limericks
Task. Practise reading them aloud and hear/find the rhythm.
viii
Introduction to the Student
Logic/Mathematical
Task: Solve the problem.
Riddles
There are several types of exercises using riddles.
1) You will be presented with ten riddles. Each riddl
e consists of a question and an answer.
Task: Match the questions with the answers.
2) You will be given a riddle with three possible answers.
Task: Choose the best/right answer. You may not always agree with the answers
given in the key.
3) You will be presented with a riddle and its answer. However, some words have been removed either from the riddle or from the answer. These words are contained in the box under the riddles.
Task: Insert the words from the box into the correct spaces.
Tongue Twisters
Task: Practise reading the tongue twister aloud. Then see if you can memorize and say it quickly without getting your tongue tied!
Word Combinations
You will be presented with two columns of words.
Task: Combine a word from the first column with a word from the second column.
Note that the word in the first column is not necessarily the first word in the combination and there may appear to be more than one possible combination.
Introduction to the Teacher
How Can I Use this Book?
The exercises in this book can be used as:
• warm up exercises at the beginning of the lessons
• fillers if you’ve used up all the content you had planned for a lesson
• simply for fun at any point during the lesson
• a means for improving students knowledge of areas of English typically not
taught in course books - these areas include idiomatic expressions, proverbs,
word combinations
• a means for introducing your students to areas of English that are part of the culture of the language - riddles, limericks, tongue twisters, palindromes etc
What Are the Other Books in this Series? Which One Should
I Read Next?
Currently there are six books in the series.
Word games, riddles and logic tests - tax your brain and boost your English
Test your personality - have fun and learn useful phrases
Wordsearches - widen your vocabulary in English
Jokes - have a laugh and improve your English
Top 50 grammar mistakes in English - how to avoid them
Top 50 vocabulary mistakes in English - how to avoid them
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Introduction to the Teacher
What Other Similar Books Might I Find Useful?
If you teach children and young teenagers, they you might be interested in my book of word games called Mindtwisters (published by Scholastic).
Various games and discussion exercises (including various quizzes/personality
tests) for older teenagers and adults can be found in Discussions AZ (two volumes: intermediate and advanced, published by Cambridge University Press).
There is also a series of discussion, warm up exercises, fillers etc published by S EFL
(sefl.co.uk).
Ideas for Other Books for this Series
If you have any ideas for other books that could be part of the Easy English series then please email me.
The Author
Since 1984 Adrian Wallwork has been teaching English as a foreign language - from General English to Business English to Scientific English. Although he lives and works in Pisa (Italy), through his university work he has taught students of all nationalities. Adrian is the author of over 30 textbooks for Springer Science+Business Media, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, the BBC, and many
other publishers. He can be contacted at: adrian.wallwork@gmail.com
Acknowledgements and Sources
A big thanks to all my students (including various maths professors) who have provided me over the years with many of the logic and mathematical games that appear in this book.
Particular thanks to Robert Parks at Wordsmyth and Prabhav Jain at EasyDefine,
who gave me permission to use the definitions that are automatically generated by their websites.
EasyDefine definitions are taken from
https://wordnet.princeton.edu/wordnet/citing-wordnet/
Some of the anagrams were created at:
Quickworksheets.net
Some of the riddles were taken from:
https://savagelegend.com/misc-resources/classic-riddles-1-100/
Most of the funny book titles were taken from:
http://allowe.com/laughs/book/Funny%20Book%20Titles.htm
Some palindromes and anagrams were taken from:
http://www.fun-with-words.com/palin_word_palindromes.html
http://www.anagrammy.com/anagrams/faq2.html
I also consulted the following books:
Good Word Guide: The fast way to correct English - spelling, punctuation,
grammar and usage, Martin Manser, A&C Black; 2007
More Puzzles and Curious Problems, Henry Ernest Dudeney, Fontana, 1970
Palindromes and Anagrams, Howard W. Bergerson, Pan American, 1973
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xii
Acknowledgements and Sources
Puzzles & Brainteasers Gyles Brandreth, Hennerwood Publications, 1982
Radio Times Puzzle Book Clive Doig, Penguin, 1984
Radio Times Brainbox Puzzle Book Vol. 3, Clive Doig, BBC, 1993
Solve it! James F Fixx, Frederick Muller, 1978
The Pan Pocket Puzzler, Michael Holt, Pan, 1985
The World’s Most Challenging Puzzles, Charles Barry Townsend, Sterling
Publishing, 1988
What’s the Name of this Book? Raymond Smullyan, Pelican, 1981
Finally, thanks to Edward de Bono whose books have inspired three generations of lateral thinkers.
The chapter titles come from the following authors and we would like to acknowl-
edge their contribution for their wonderful chapters.
2) We do not stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop
playing! (Benjamin Franklin)
3) The scientist should treasure the riddles he can’t solve. (Roberto Unger)
4) Play up! play up! And play the game. (Sir Henry Newbolt)
5) Thanks to words, we have been able to rise above the brute. (Aldous Huxley)
6) Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind. (Rudyard Kipling) 7) Words are illusions. (Bodidharma)
8) Language exists as songs, riddles, or epics that are chanted. (F. Sionil Jose) 9) Life is more fun if you play games. (Roald Dahl)
10) Words outlive people, institutions, civilizations. (Inga Muscio)
11) Have fun and play as many word games as possible. ( Sophie Winkleman)
Contents
1 Introduction to the games, riddles and verses used in this book
1
Acronyms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Ambiguous Headlines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Anagrams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Funny Book Titles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Lewis Carroll. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Limericks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Palindromes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Proverbs and Idioms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Riddles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Rhyming Forms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Similes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . 12
Tongue Twisters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2 We do not stop playing because we grow old,
we grow old because we stop playing!
15
Riddles 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Anagrams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Funny Book Titles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Limericks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Proverbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Logic 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Logic 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Word Combinations 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Word Combinations 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Tense Challenge 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Ambiguous Headlines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Riddles 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Tongue Twisters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Logic 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
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Contents
Anagrams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Tense Challenge 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Word Ladder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3 The scientist should treasure the riddles he can’t solve
29
Rhyming Forms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29