Word Games

Hi there, I'm Peter Noblett. I originally created the game Xanagrams in 1983 and this version in 2024. Please let me know if something doesn't work. I also love hearing suggestions. Email me at xanagarams@gmail.com.

Legal

This site is now owned and operated by my company:

Xanagrams Ltd

Registered in England and Wales
Company Number: 11990067

Xanagrams offers several enjoyable options all of which are excellent ways to test your knowledge of written French.

Again, there are the 3 words lists to choose from.

Tip: Start with the simplest option then work your way down this list of games.

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

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• English Words (List 2) with French clues - Level: Moderate   Play Now

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• French Words, no clues - Level: Easy   Play Now

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• French Words with English clues - Level: Moderate   Play Now

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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

Xanagrams will start storing your playing history so that you can

• Enter our daily competitions and see if you are one of our winners
• See the daily competition winners for the last week
• See what games you successfully completed today
• List your 20 highest scoring games
• List the top 50 highest scoring games by all players
• Check out the best Runs of correctly guessed letters

Also

• Chinese Simplified clues are added to the games
• Chinese Traditional clues are added to the games

Chinese

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.