Lingo Word Games

Lingo word games sharpen your thinking skills and are a lot of fun. If you like to watch “Lingo” on television, you may be interested to know that you can play Lingo word games online. In Lingo, you try to guess a five letter word. The first letter is given to you, and you have several tries to guess it.

Lingo Word Games

The game show Lingo aired on television in the United States from 1987 to 1988 and was hosted by Michael Reagan. The show was revived as an original series in 2002 on the Game Show Network. It aired until 2007 and was hosted by Chuck Woolery.  

The format of the GSN version of Lingo word games has two teams of two people who try and guess a five letter word. The first letter is given, and if a letter is guessed correctly and is positioned in the right spot, then it is added to the next row in a red square. If it is not in the correct space, it is highlighted with a yellow circle. Each team gets five tries. If they take too much time or the word they guess is not an allowed word (like a proper noun or not a real word), has too many letters, is misspelled, or they make other mistakes, the other team takes over and is give a bonus letter.    

The team that guesses the word correctly gets to grab balls that have numbers on them. These are part of a large Lingo board, and the team that eventually gets five numbers in a row makes a “lingo” and wins that round. Some balls make the team lose a turn.  

The team with the most points at the end of the game wins and gets to play a two minute round called the Lingo Round. They get a number of bonus letters according to how many “Lingos” they won. Two letters are revealed for each word, the initial letter and one other. They get five guesses before the word is revealed and they move on to another word.   

Lingo Games Online        

Big Money Arcade has Lingo word games to play. It provides 1260 puzzle words so you can play a long time and not repeat a word. The levels start at 400 points, then they go down to 250, 200, 150, 100, and 50. You type in your guess, then press “enter” on your keyboard. If you get a letter right, it will appear on the next line. If you picked a letter that is in the word but not in the right position, it will be surrounded by a gold circle.  

There are a couple of ways the game helps you. When you type the first letter, a list of possible letters to follow that letter is listed at the bottom of the grid. You can also receive three hints while playing. This will give you the next letter in the word. When you guess a word, you are rewarded with points and applause.  

Game Show Network

GSN is a cable television channel that went on the air in December of 1994. It is owned by DirecTV and Sony Pictures Entertainment and its motto is “Play every day.” The first game show aired was Match Game ’73. Most of the early shows were reruns of shows produced by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman. By 1997, the rights to most of the Goodson-Todman shows expired, and GSN had to run less popular shows. In April of 1998, GSN bought the rights to the Goodson-Todman library of game shows.

2001 saw several changes. Half of the network was taken over by Liberty Media and Rich Cronin from FOX was hired as president of the network. This year also saw original programming begin again since the start of GSN. In 2004, GSN stopped referring to itself on the air as "Game Show Network" and became "The Network for Games". Current shows include: Lingo, Catch 21, The Newlywed Game, Baggage, Instant Recall, and Late Night Liars.