Get your thinking caps on and be ready to flex your brain muscles in this fun and energetic Mac word game Boggles. Based on the board game this video version is fast and challenging to play for all ages. So get ready to press the bubble and make as many words as you can.

The play is to click on the bubble to scramble the letters. From there you make as many words as possible and as quickly as you can. You can decide whether to make 3 or 4 letter words or longer. The longer the word the better and you’ll receive more points. There are 3 modes of play in Boggle. Easy and medium are easy plays and good for young kids but still enjoyable. The real fun begins in the hard mode. This mode is difficult and can be played with older children and adults. You can enjoy this fast action game with your friends and family. You can have 2-4 players on Boggle or play against the computer.

The game board is good with clear letters and graphics. Sometimes clearing letters to start over took some of your precious time on the board. The only annoying factor to this game is the announcer with encouraging short statements. I guess it is good for kids but it can get monotonous with the same phrases rallying your play.

Playing with others will give you the opportunity to yell “Boggle!” I’ve never played the board game, but if it’s as good as the Mac version, I’ll have to check it out. Go exercise your mental fitness by playing this great word game.

Features of Boggle:
-Words and Letters
-3 Modes
-Up to 4 Players
-Family Fun

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Continental Café is a conglomeration of puzzles, story and delicious recipes. It is cleverly held together with an unlikely tale about Laura winning the lottery, buying a restaurant with a mystery behind the former owner, a sinister character and then traveling the world to learn how to cook recipes made famous by other foreign chefs. It somehow works.

Your play begins on an airplane clicking on lit stars for hints. You click until you are suddenly stopped. Hopefully you will get far in this mini bonus game but you can also lose everything. The world map will take you first to France to meet Kallie Crotteau, a well renown French chef. She will help you with new recipes after you do some favors. Running errands for the chef consists of multiple puzzles – all different with some easy and others difficult. There are jigsaw, match the shape, word, slide, and tasks to complete puzzles before you can play the hidden object scene. One logic game is similar to World Mosaic and fun to play. The rewards for completing these puzzles are the real recipes you can use and make a delicious meal for your family. This is similar to the latest cooking Mac games like Top Chef and Hell’s Kitchen.

Each puzzle is different and all may not be something you are into so the game provides a rain check if you are lucky enough to earn it. This rain check will allow you to pass on a game if you want. This feature is great because I do not like all the puzzles and opted to skip a game. Unfortunately, I couldn’t play the Word Wheel because it kept timing me out. I later learned that if you play it in the hard mode, the game will progress normally.

I enjoy this game even with the minor flaw. The puzzles are diverse making it feel like you are getting a variety of games and the recipes are bonuses on top of the excellent graphics and well thought out puzzles.

Features of Continental Café:
-Challenging Puzzles
-Recipes
-Top 5 Chefs

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Mac game Big Kahuna Words is part of Reflexive’s successful Big Kahuna match game series. The music and the oceanic reef scenes are identical to the match plays. The puzzle formation, power ups and blocks are also very familiar. However, the similarities end there. You return to the depth of the blue seas to form words instead of matching 3 items to garner points.

The play is simple to learn but forming the words will be a challenge even with the hint button. You can play either relaxed or the action timed mode. You click on letters touching each other to form a word. You can drag one letter to another to swap positions. If you have trouble configuring a word, click on the hint button and then move over the letters to see what word can be made. The longer the words, the more points you will get and also earn you a bonus word bomb to destroy letters. You must make words over the stones to destroy the square and after all the stone blocks are gone, the level is complete. If the square is metal then you must make a word over it 2 times to destroy. If the square is locked you must use that letter at the beginning of the word.

The many power-ups are the wild cards, explosives and bonus words. There is a volcano level where the letters on the board will change. Statistics are given after each level and this data will encourage you to do better in the next stage. Also after each level you return to the reef to release fish, turtles and sharks to the waters for your screensavers. In addition, interesting information is given when choosing your items to release into the ocean.

Big Kahuna Words is an enjoyable challenge to your brain fitness in the higher levels when the puzzle boards in various unusual shapes and many blocks will test your mental capabilities. You will need to summon all your brain cells when dealing with the small corners with just consonants, but will savor revenge when an explosive destroys some of those very letters that are in your path to completing a level. Big Kahuna Words is not as funny as Bookworm Deluxe but is just as difficult and addictive in its play. If that is not enough, you also get a great screensaver to sit back and enjoy the beautiful reef.

Features of Big Kahuna Reef:
-2 Play Modes
-Coral Reef Screensaver
-Word Creation Rewards
-More Levels Online

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Who wouldn’t want to grow up in a magical pet shop? Tommy Broombucket is not living up to his full potential as an up and coming wizard apprentice to his Uncle Artem the pet shop owner. All Tommy has to do is deliver pets to customers, clean bat cages, feed unicorns and do well in wizard school. Alas, Tommy does not do well in any of those things upsetting his uncle so much that he puts Tommy in a book of spells to fend for himself.

It is up to you to help Tommy escape this imprisonment by creating a word path to exit the book. In a Scrabble like fashion you make up words from the given letters at the top of the screen. Each new word must connect to the old words forming a link or path to the gate to the right. You click on a letter and drag it to the game board, place it on a square  and when a word is made the pink letters will turn green. There is a Stamina gauge that goes down when you do not make a word, but will fill up again when you do form a word. The more dots on the letter pieces will garner you more points. The helps on the right top are locked until you save an animal by forming your words to their island. The helps are hammers, clear, magic tile and hint hat.

There are 2 modes of play in Thomas and the Magical Words: Adventure and Survival. In Adventure the time fills up when you make a word and you can easily complete a level at your leisure. The Survival mode is locked until you pass several levels in the Adventure mode. The Survival mode has the Stamina Gauge continuously running out so your play must be made quickly or you will lose the level. In this mode there are a lot more extras and is a more exciting play. There are certain squares on the game board that will give you more points (2x, 3x, etc.).

In between the levels are mini puzzles to give you a break from thinking up words and to try and get more helps. The game is to guess what the keyword is at the top of the page. You get certain number of guesses on what the letters might be in order to figure out the keyword.

Thomas and the Magical Words is a wonderful and educational Mac game for both children and adults. It can be easy if you make very short words, but the trick is to make the longest word possible from the letters given to you, and on top of all that rescue cute little animals and Tommy on the different islands throughout the Book of Spells. I really enjoy playing the Survival mode with its many extras and the timed factor. Try out both modes and see which one fits you the best, but do try it. Don’t let the cartoon characters and story line hold you back. They are just as fun to view as playing this Scrabble like word game.

Feature of Thomas and the Magical Words:
-Adventure and Survival Modes
-48 Levels
-Guess the Word Mini Game
-Unravel the Exciting Story

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Word games are always fun to play and are great workouts for your brain. Lately the current buzzwords for those who want to stay young and vital are mental fitness and brain training. Exercising your brain is in and Mac word game Text Twist 2 will do just that and more for your overall well-being.

Everyone is different and Text Twist 2 takes that into consideration by creating 3 modes of play to fit all types of people. In the Lightning mode you must use all the letters offered to make a word before the time runs out. Some people are good at this mode, but others, like me, need more time to figure out the word. What’s great about this game is you can twist the letters around so maybe you’ll have better luck making your word. The crossword puzzle mode is in the crossword configuration and you make words using the blocks presented both vertically and horizontally. Word of the Day will give you letters every day to form your words.

The classic play is time or untimed depending on how you are feeling that day. You are presented with a group of letters and you click on the one letter at a time to form words. The clicked letters will go into boxes above the available letters and you click again to submit your word. At the very top of the screen you will find empty squares of 3 or more. Once you make any accepted word, your word will be placed in the boxes. Once you fill up all the 3 letter words, the game will not take anymore even if you come up with a good word. You need to go on and make 4 or more letter words to fill up the rest of the boxes. If you are lucky enough to get the bingo word, you can go on to the next level. Most of the time the bingo word uses more than 4 letters. However if you do not get the bingo word and your brain is spent, you might want to use one of the couple of passes available to you, but remember the object of this game is to form as many words as possible.

Text Twist 2 is a great game for the whole family. I had fun just playing by myself and will return to this game. It is not only enjoyable and educational, but it’s addictive as well. If you are into word games, try twisting some of the letters and form your own words. Your brain will thank you for it.

Features of Text Twist 2:
-More Than 25,000 Words
-3 Modes
-Great Graphics

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Let’s face it, not too many of us aspire to be the national spelling bee champion, but it’s still fun to compete and possibly win on the Merriam Webster Spell-Jam competition. This game will take you through different sets to prepare you to become the preeminent winner.

There are 3 modes of play in this game: Practice, Game Show and Competition. Practice will give you 25 words to spell, and it will take you through the session 3 times. Hopefully you will be able to spell all the words correctly by the third time. In all three modes you are able to choose from Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced. A commentator gives you the word, and you have 4 options before spelling it. You may ask to repeat the word, give you a sentence, definition, or origin or get all 4 hints. I found that repeating the word and the definition helps you the most unless you know Latin or Greekthen the origin may aid you in correctly responding. The sidebar will show all your correct answers in green and the misspelled ones in red.

The Game Show mode is probably the most interesting since you can win money and have helps besides the 4 hints available in Practice mode. They are Pass to skip the word, Uniques will give you letters jumbled, 1st letters give you the first 3 letters of the word, Consonants gives you only the consonants, Vowels gives you just the vowels, and Word Choice will offer you 4 words to choose the correct spelling. You have the option to play up to 200 rounds of spelling for this mode, and you can win from $100 to $1000.

In the Competition mode you may add up to 7 players to compete against you and will bring up each player through an underground elevetor to the podium. The most difficult part of this section is that you cannot redo your typing. You must get the spelling correct the first time you type it on the board.

In between the game levels there are Speed Rounds where you spell as many words correctly in 1 minute. Here more than any other part of the game you need to have excellent typing skills in addition to outstanding spelling prowess.  I found this section to be the most exhilarating.

I found this word game very interesting. I think it can improve both your spelling and typing abilities in a fun way. The difficulty levels are appropriate, but not even close to the National Spelling Bee tournament (luckily), and the beginner’s level is too difficult for young children but should be fine for 8 year olds and up. The intermediate level includes a few commonly used foreign words, and the advanced incorporates even more esoteric vocabulary. I thought it was curious to use the same words in the different modes. For instance in the advanced Game Show level they used the word liege and it came up again in Competition.  I’m sure all you RPG players can spell this word easily.

With spell check available everywhere, there appears to be no need to have a strong spelling skill, but everyone will take pride in spelling well in this fun and educational Mac game. This game is not for everyone, but if you are into word games, this one is different enough to make it appealing and entertaining.

Features of Merriam Webster Spell-Jam:
-Fun Game play
-3 Modes: Practice, Game Show and Competition
-Multi-player game play

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars