Guest Author - Janet Collins

I come from a long line of word game enthusiasts. My parents have been fans of TV shows like Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy since they first went on the air. Over the years, both shows have become something of a guilty pleasure for me, too.

Board games based on words have long held a special place in the family as well. Scrabble was the game of choice until the day my mother brought home UpWords. (For those unfamiliar with the latter, it's sort of a 3D version of Scrabble. More of a challenge, to be sure, but more of the fun, too.)

While all those games were much enjoyed, nothing caused more excitement - or rivalry - than the weekend newspaper crossword. That said, sudoku is fast becoming the game of choice for me.

I thought it might be fun for the word game enthusiasts among you to join in on a Senior Travel version of three of my favourite word games - hangman, word search, and word scramble. All games are very kid-friendly, so the grandchildren can play along, too.

Three games have been set up for your playing pleasure - one of hangman, one word search, and one word scramble. Like everything else on BellaOnline, it's absolutely free to play any of the games. Play as often as you like. No, there are no prizes awarded for correct answers, but you will garner some impressive bragging rights.

Of course, no game can be played without a few helpful hints:

The answers to all of the games are geographic locations. Some are countries, others states/provinces, and there are even a few cities thrown in for good measure.

In order to make the games a little more interesting, I've written all words in lower case so that the odd capital letter doesn't give away the answer to any particular puzzle.

No spaces, punctuation, abbreviations, or accent marks have been used. No single answer contains more than one word (so don't try to make New York or St. Augustine fit in anywhere).

Click onto the links below to log onto your favourite game. Choose from hangman, word search, or word scramble by clicking onto the corresponding link.

Let me know how you like the games I've set up. And look for more free travel-related games in the future.

To play the games, click on the URLs listed below.

Have fun!