Acrostics

• Acrostics is a paper-pencil game for two or more players.

• Origin of the word is the combination of Ancient Greek words ἄκρος "highest, topmost" and στίχος "verse". Hence the highest verse made of the first letters of the verse.

• According to Wikipedia, it was commonly used in medieval literature and Renaissance, among others, to highlight the name of the poet, to make a prayer to a saint, or simply to hide a message.

• In the game things work completely differently though. And what you will get in the end is a group of words forming the same acrositc downwards with initials and upwards with last letters, and a lot of fun in between.

• The first player chooses a word of at least five letters which each player writes in a column down the left-hand side of their paper. They then write the same word in reverse down the right-hand side of the paper.

• Players have to fill in words which start and end with the resulting letters.

• The winner is either the player who fills in all the spaces first or the player who has the most (or longest) words within a set time (say three minutes).

• Example
• • Chas suggests English as the word. He fills in the words as shown above, later adding the scores for each letter used.

Source: The Oxford A to Z of Word Games