Word Bandit - a game and a gadget!

Family visit alert!!! An occasional series to solve your ‘Help! How will we entertain them?!?’ emergencies.

This one's suitable for: Ages 8 and above. Even quite a long way above.

OK – this one’s always popular, because it features a GADGET.

Kids love gadgets. You don’t need to be a leading UK games manufacturer, spending millions on research and focus groups* to know that.

You can get the nub of the Word Bandit game straight away, just from the picture. An excitingly gadgety bandit machine, with letters.

(The image doesn’t quite convey the satisfying ‘thunk’ when you pull the lever, or the exciting clickety-click ‘whoosh’ of the spinning drums… but you get the general idea.)

The game-around-the-gadget is beautifully simple, asking you to find unique topic words based around the letters that you see. So you might land: ‘items in the kitchen beginning with…’, or ‘famous people with initials…’

Although it’s designed as a competitive game, Word Bandit works just as well as a solo challenge – plant your visiting child at the end of the kitchen table whilst you get the fish fingers done, and a few words of encouragement from you will be all that’s required.

Conversely, get down to business and play hard against the youngsters: the game can be as difficult and challenging as you make it.

One last thing – no batteries are required, nope, none whatsoever. So go stash that Word Bandit in a readily-accessible cupboard for when the kids next descend upon you…

(*We didn’t, tbh. We just knew that kids love gadgets.)