Are you bored at work and the boss isn’t looking? Do you have time to kill while the laundry is running? Are you up too late and tired of infomercials?

As a constant punner, Wheaton, Illinois resident Anthony Trendl thought there must be more people like him. There were. After developing Word:Word, A Game of Relationship on a discussion board frequented by Amazon.com book reviewers, with thousands of posts, he decided to move it to Facebook. In the last two years, he says with a smile, “More words have been flung around than at a dictionary sale.”

Play now (to play online, you must have a Facebook account).

So far, over 150 people have joined him in playing with words on Facebook, playing several word games simultaneously. 

Word:Word is a simple game, based on creatively abusing the relationships between words. With members from across the globe, from the UK, India, Hungary, the Philippines, as well as the United States, lively and interesting word play is a daily event. Family-friendly, multi-cultural and wit are all part of the game’s allure.

You don’t need Facebook to play it, but you do need a verbal friend or two. Just choose a word to start things off and go from there.

The rules:

1. Each word is returned with a relating word. The relationship must not be obtuse nor vague.
2. If I say ‘brown’, you say ‘dog’ and then I say ‘cat’ and you say ‘milk’, and I say ‘cookies’, and so on.
3. It cannot be direct, like ‘yellow’ then ‘orange’, but not so reaching as ‘yellow’ then ‘pancreas’
4. Only one word as your answer. If you must, provide a definition to clarify, especially in the case of idioms. Use parenthesis. Hyphenated words (low-budget, X-ray, mother-in-law) are fine, as they are really one word.
5. Proper nouns are OK. Use carefully.
6. Be creative.

Not enough?
Members of the group have picked up the ball and ran with it, creating six other exciting games.

Find a new adjective – A word follows the previous adjective, meaning close to the same thing. (creator: Linda Logan of Manchester, United Kingdom)

Change one letter – Change one letter of the previous five letter word to make a new word. (creator: Linda Logan)

Adverbs – A word follows the previous adverb, meaning close to the same thing. (creator: Leslie Kinney of Redondo Beach, California)

Oxymorons – Imagine green blackberry or inside out. (creator: Karen Sue Krause of Pensacola, Florida)

Antonyms – A word follows the previous one, meaning the opposite. (creator: Vivian Brown Bissett of Florence, South Carolina)

Song game – Enter sentence and can only enter next song sentence but must use one word from previous song entry. (creator: Vivian Brown Bissett)