Word games in Japanese (similar to Newspaper games in English?)


I am a big fan of what I would call "word games" that are often found in
English newspapers like crosswords, cryptograms, scrambled word games, etc.

Usually games like these somehow involve overlapping letters of perpendicular
words, rearranging letters to form a word, or something similar.

I wanted to know if there are similar common games in Japanese, not
necessarily found in a newspaper. I found
[Shiritori](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiritori) which is kind of similar
where the last (relevant) mora of a word is used to start the next word, and
so on.

[Does there exist a poem that uses direction to change its
meaning?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/25061/does-there-exist-
a-poem-that-uses-direction-to-change-its-meaning) The comments/answers in this
post may point to these not being common.




> I wanted to know if there are similar common games in Japanese

There are several of such games in Japanese.

[[言葉遊]｛ことばあそ｝び
](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%A8%80%E8%91%89%E9%81%8A%E3%81%B3#),
literally "word play", might be the word you are looking for. Notice that this
is connected exactly to "word play" in English, if you read the article in
another language.

In this article you can see many representative games, among which anagrams,
ambigrams, etc.

Some popular Japanese word games are
[しりとり](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%81%97%E3%82%8A%E3%81%A8%E3%82%8A#),
which you mention as well, a Japanese version of Fictionary called
[たほいや](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%81%9F%E3%81%BB%E3%81%84%E3%82%84),
and
[語呂{ごろ}合{あ}わせ](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%AA%9E%E5%91%82%E5%90%88%E3%82%8F%E3%81%9B)。The
latter also have a an English [wikipedia
article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_wordplay), from which I quote:

> Goroawase (語呂合わせ) is an especially common form of Japanese wordplay whereby
> homophonous words are associated with a given series of letters, numbers or
> symbols, in order to associate a new meaning with that series. The new words
> can be used to express a superstition about certain letters or numbers. More
> commonly, however, goroawase is used as a mnemonic technique, especially in
> the memorization of numbers such as dates in history, scientific constants,
> and phone numbers.

EDIT:

Reading your comments, it seems you want to know if games such as crosswords
exist in Japanese. They do, there is even [this website](https://xn--
pckua2c4hla2f.jp/) as an online reference. Unless I still don't understand
your question.




> I wanted to know if there are similar common games in Japanese

There are several of such games in Japanese.

[[言葉遊]｛ことばあそ｝び
](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%A8%80%E8%91%89%E9%81%8A%E3%81%B3#),
literally "word play", might be the word you are looking for. Notice that this
is connected exactly to "word play" in English, if you read the article in
another language.

In this article you can see many representative games, among which anagrams,
ambigrams, etc.

Some popular Japanese word games are
[しりとり](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%81%97%E3%82%8A%E3%81%A8%E3%82%8A#),
which you mention as well, a Japanese version of Fictionary called
[たほいや](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%81%9F%E3%81%BB%E3%81%84%E3%82%84),
and
[語呂{ごろ}合{あ}わせ](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%AA%9E%E5%91%82%E5%90%88%E3%82%8F%E3%81%9B)。The
latter also have a an English [wikipedia
article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_wordplay), from which I quote:

> Goroawase (語呂合わせ) is an especially common form of Japanese wordplay whereby
> homophonous words are associated with a given series of letters, numbers or
> symbols, in order to associate a new meaning with that series. The new words
> can be used to express a superstition about certain letters or numbers. More
> commonly, however, goroawase is used as a mnemonic technique, especially in
> the memorization of numbers such as dates in history, scientific constants,
> and phone numbers.

EDIT:

Reading your comments, it seems you want to know if games such as crosswords
exist in Japanese. They do, there is even [this website](https://xn--
pckua2c4hla2f.jp/) as an online reference. Unless I still don't understand
your question.

