Word games in Japanese (similar to Newspaper games in English?)

Question

I am a big fan of what I would call "word games" that are often found in English newspapers like crosswords, cryptograms, scrambled word games, etc.

Usually games like these somehow involve overlapping letters of perpendicular words, rearranging letters to form a word, or something similar.

I wanted to know if there are similar common games in Japanese, not necessarily found in a newspaper. I found Shiritori which is kind of similar where the last (relevant) mora of a word is used to start the next word, and so on.

Does there exist a poem that uses direction to change its meaning? The comments/answers in this post may point to these not being common.

Answer 1

I wanted to know if there are similar common games in Japanese

There are several of such games in Japanese.

[言葉遊]｛ことばあそ｝び , literally "word play", might be the word you are looking for. Notice that this is connected exactly to "word play" in English, if you read the article in another language.

In this article you can see many representative games, among which anagrams, ambigrams, etc.

Some popular Japanese word games are しりとり, which you mention as well, a Japanese version of Fictionary called たほいや, and 語呂{ごろ}合{あ}わせ。The latter also have a an English wikipedia article, from which I quote:

Goroawase (語呂合わせ) is an especially common form of Japanese wordplay whereby homophonous words are associated with a given series of letters, numbers or symbols, in order to associate a new meaning with that series. The new words can be used to express a superstition about certain letters or numbers. More commonly, however, goroawase is used as a mnemonic technique, especially in the memorization of numbers such as dates in history, scientific constants, and phone numbers.

EDIT:

Reading your comments, it seems you want to know if games such as crosswords exist in Japanese. They do, there is even this website as an online reference. Unless I still don't understand your question.

Answer 2

Maybe these kanji puzzles fit your description better, particularly the first row of puzzles: 漢字しりとり, 穴埋め and 漢字分割推理.

漢字しりとり (Kanji shiritori)

Rules

The goal of this first puzzle is to connect all but two characters into a long kanji shiritori train consisting of words that are at least two kanji characters long. The two kanji that are not connected then form the solution to the puzzle.

Note that the reading of a kanji character can differ from link to link, the character has to be compatible, not its reading.

Solution

Here, the shiritori chain is as follows:

START (top left) → 面談 → 談話 → 話題 → 題目 → 目論見 → 見聞録 → 録画 → 画面 → 面白 → 白骨 → 骨格筋 → 筋力 → 力仕事 → 事業家 → 家庭科 → 科目 → GOAL (bottom right)

The two characters that are not connected are:

体 and 車

The solution therefore is:

車体 because 体車 doesn't exist

穴埋め (Fill in the gap)

Rules

The aim in this puzzle is to find the central kanji such that CENTRE + RIGHT, CENTRE + BOTTOM, LEFT + CENTRE and TOP + CENTRE are all valid two-character compounds. Again, reading is not important here, only the fitting kanji.

Solution

The solution to this puzzle would be:

愚

With the valid compounds:

愚痴, 愚行, 暗愚 and 凡愚

漢字分割推理 (Partial kanji)

Rules

For this puzzle, two or more kanji characters that form a valid compound are partially shown in a square grid. The solution to the puzzle is the compound that comprises the partially visible kanji.

Solution (easy puzzle)

The partially visible kanji are:

Left: 面, right: 書

The solution therefore is:

書面 because 面書 is not a valid compound

Solution (hard puzzle)

The partially visible kanji are:

Top left: 効, top right: 果, bottom left: 相, bottom right: 乗

The solution therefore is:

相乗効果

Answer 3

The Wikipedia page has examples of tons of similar games. Then there are なぞなぞ, that is riddles, which play with the meanings of the words. Here's one list, although you can basically find an unlimited supply on google.

I guess something like 文字パズル or possibly 単語パズル could be closer to what you're referring to. I'm not aware of any formal term for a game like this, though.