Reviewed: Blank

Some scientists like to come up with new brainy games in their spare time, but Angela Ramsey and Andy Briggs have made their passion for games into a business.

The former health physicists (both worked in the British nuclear power industry) have invented a stimulating word game called Blank, and made it commercially available in the United Kingdom and the United States.

Blank can be played by any number of players, including solo. Winners must know plenty of unusual words—and be able to retrieve them from the recesses of their memory with the lightning speed of a Google search.

The idea of Blank is simple: Given three random letters with two blanks in between, find words that fill in both blanks while using at least two of the given letters, in the given order. For instance, with the letters C-R-T one can make the words CaRd, aCcReTion or triCeRaTops, but RoTation is not acceptable.

Allowed words are those in any standard English dictionary, though words that start with a capital letter are out.

Longer words earn more points, especially if they extend to the left of the random letters.

Speed is key: the game comes with a sand timer, and the more words you can think of in the minutes you have, the more points you earn.

Blank comes with an ingenious random generator for assigning letters: A figure-eight rail in which letters printed on plastic chips cycle around like cars on a never-ending highway junction.

Davide Castelvecchi