Word Games

Xanagrams offers several fun options, all of which are excellent ways to test your knowledge of French, German, Spanish or Polish.

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French Clues

The spelling of some modern French words is often the same as their English equivalent. Xanagrams includes two slightly different sets of French clues. The second set, Easy French is designed to help those just starting to learn French, as it contains many words that have a similar spelling to the corresponding English word.

To make it a little more challenging, any words where the English and French spelling is the same have been removed from the first set of French words.

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With each lanaguage there are the 3 words lists to choose from.

Tip: Start with the easiset (Word List 1).

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Some Examples of Multilingual Games

• Classic Xanagrams (Easy) - English words (List 1) with Easy French Clues - Level: Easy   Play Now

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• Classic Xanagrams (Medium) - French words with English clues - Level: Moderate   Play Now

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• Easy Jumble - English Words (List 3) with clues in Spanish - Level: Moderate   Play Now

Every day there are three special Xanagrams games where you can compete against other players and the clock.

If you are the first person to play one of these games you will just be competing against the clock. If anyone else has played the game before you, you will see their time and score, which is your target to beat!

We know our players have a range of skills so each of the 3 daily games are set at different levels.

< p>If you successfully complete any of these games you can see how well you did by clicking the Competition tab on the Gaming History page. The Competition tab shows your Competition results for the last 7 days.

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• Game Format 1 - Classic Xanagrams - Easy - Starts with the first and last letter of every word, the buttons show the letters you need to find - Level: Easy   Play Now

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• Game Format 2 - Classic Xanagrams - Medium - Starts with only the first letter of every word - Level: A little harder   Play Now

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• Game Format 3 - Classic Xanagrams - Hard - There are no letters, just the buttons showing the letters that make up the word(s) - Level: Hard   Play Now

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• Game Format 4 - Xanagrams Easy Jumble - The boxes are filled with the missing letters but they are all jumbled up. The buttons show the letters that are in the words. The more letters you find, the easier the game becomes - Level: Easy   Play Now

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• Game Format 5 - Xanagrams Classic Jumble - Another classic Xanagrams game, here the buttons are no longer a clue as they show the whole alphabet - Level: Medium   Play Now

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• Game Format 6 - Xanagrams Word Hunt - The only clue you have is the first and last letters, the buttons show the whole alphabet - Level: Challenging   Play Now

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• Game Format 7 - Xanagrams Super Word Hunt - This is the absolute classic Xanagrams game! Like Word Hunt, but you only start with the first letter of each word - Level: Super Hard   Play Now

When it comes to Chinese there are two forms of spoken Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese) and two forms of written Chinese (Simplified and Traditional).

What is used where?

Region	Spoken	Written
China	Mandarin	Simplified
Hong Kong	Cantonese	Traditonal
Taiwan	Mandarin	Traditonal
Singapore	Mandarin	Simplified

Both Simplified and traditional Chinese are, unlike English, tonal languages. This means the meaning of a word can very with tone (pitch) with which it is spoken.

Simplified Chinese has 4 tones plus a neutral (flat) tone.

Cantonese is more complex, it can have 9 tones. If you are thinking of learning Cantonese you may find this article "helpfull" Nine Tones of Hell

Where does Pinyin fit in?

Pinyin was developed to make it easier for westerners to learn Mandardin by writing down the sounds using the western alphabet (a process called romanization). The earliest version of romanization was developed by two British diplomats, Thomas Wade and Herbert Giles and published as a dictionary in 1892.

To make things a little confusing several other versions of Pinyin were developed. However, in 1958 Haynu Pinyin became officially adopted by China and that is the version we have used in Xanagrams.

Hanyu Pinyin's tone marks can be replaced with tone numbers, in Xanagrams we call this numeric tonation and we have included it because many find this format easier to learn.