Is English an innately playful language? Are word games good for you? Do we divide into number and word players? And could Scrabble have been invented in any other language? In this special programme, Stephen Fry examines many word games, and explores why the English are so hooked on them...

This extended episode of Fry's English Delight was originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 28 December 2010. I have to be honest and admit that I really didn't understand the point of this CD. There's no real serious exploration of the concept of word games, how they originated or the different types etc. Instead we seem to be offered a rather messy stream of consciousness as we move back and forwards between very loosely linked segments. Maybe a more detailed and better researched exploration of the subject would have been more entertaining. There are a few too many times when we are told a "fact" that in reality might not be a fact, but rather just the retelling of something someone heard down the pub.

Over the course of the hour long CD we hear some familiar voices playing unfamiliar games - Sheila Dillon from The Food Programme plays 'Font or Cheese' (which incidentally is probably this programme's finest segment - shame it's so short) against miscellanist Ben Schott. Phill Juptitus talks about his personal word game habits, and we remember the late Humphrey Lyttelton's scurrilous account of Una Stubbs on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue. We travel deep inside the mind of puzzle-setter Chris Maslanka and visit the Comedy Store in London to experience the lightning reflexes of some top word-athletes. Plus, we examine an extraordinary claim - that the fashion for increasingly cryptic crosswords helped to defeat Hitler.

4

Nick Smithson