Second, although I didn’t get a lot of sets, I did manage at least two — so indeed even someone well beyond those with impressionable brains can enjoy it.

It’s lots of fun, give it a try!

And one can exercise a limited amount of strategy in this game. For example, if one accurately estimates the number of turns that remain (before a viable word is forced to completion by one’s opponent), then one can attempt to steer the combinatoric assembly process and play one’s turn appropriately (penultimately).

A friend and I were inspired by the James Thurber word game (a.k.a. “SuperGhost” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_(game)]) and invented a variant where the assembled fragment may undergo anagrammatic transformation. So there’s not just one word fragment growing at both ends at each player’s turn, but an ever expanding set of admissible fragments one can generate through rearrangement.

This really taxes one’s memory while rewarding skill for visualizing and generating novel combinations of symbols.