US-6422561-B1

A word search based game including a playing surface divided into individual playing cells and a plurality of both alphanumeric playing and directional instruction tiles. The alphanumeric tiles are placed on the playing surface in a manner to form word following a word search format, that is to say words may be forwards or backwards, vertically, horizontally or diagonally and do not necessarily have to form words with every alphanumeric playing tile that happens to be adjacent on the board to the played alphanumeric playing tiles. Directional instruction tiles are of the same size, shape and color as the alphanumeric playing tiles so that they may be drawn at random with alphanumeric playing tiles, but indicate a desired direction in which to form a word and a bonus multiplier if a word follows said direction. Also provided are a plurality of category cards, one drawn at the start of a game, to provide a scoring bonus to words formed which meet the category. The game is adaptable to both a traditional board game format and a computerized format.