Attention language lovers: prepare to be taken prisoner. Willard R. Espy, word gamester extraordinaire, has put together more than 200 sublimely satisfying diversions -- including acrostics, clerihews, epigrams, cryptograms, spoonerisms, palindromes, puns, and much, much more.

Presented here are the wildest array of tongue twisters, brainteasers, and other mind-benders new and old, along with notes on their histories, tips on how to play them or solve them, and page after page of mind-boggling challenges you won't find anywhere else. It is a celebration of the energy, wit, flexibility, and fun of the English language by its most ardent aficionado.

About the Author

Willard Richardson Espy (11 December 1910–20 February 1999) was a U.S. editor, philologist, writer, and poet. He is particularly remembered for his anthology of light verse and wordplay, An Almanac of Words at Play, and its two sequels. His writing and poetry regularly appeared in Punch, Reader's Digest, and Word Ways.