7 Super-Fun Paper and Pen Games for Girls Who Are Feeling Nostalgic ...

While rarely talked about today, Sudoku used to be a pretty popular game among the general public, mostly due to the fact that it’s a number-based game and therefore more likely to appeal to different cultures and countries. If you don’t already know, Sudoku is a logical puzzle that requires deductive reasoning and detection of patterns to place missing numbers on the grid. It’s an easily portable game that you can play on the train, during your lunch break or while waiting for your appointment.

You can still find crossword puzzles in the newspapers today but in this day and age not many individuals pick up newspapers, let alone read them or fill out crosswords. And that is really unfortunate, since games like this are great puzzles that can keep your brain young and boost your fluency.

Before the board game and smartphone apps, battleship existed as a pen and pencil game. The 10 by 10 grid was drawn on plain paper and labeled along the sides with letters and numbers. The battleships, cruisers, submarines, etc. were drawn on the grid and voila, the game was ready to play!

Tic-tac-toe is one of the oldest two-player classics that is known for its simplicity. You probably played it constantly in elementary school or on the playground and found it quite addicting. I mean, who plays one round of tic-tac-toe, right? The goal of the game is simple: you must succeed in placing three of your marks diagonally, horizontally or vertically on the 3x3 grid.

You probably already know, but Hangman is a two player game in which one player thinks of a word and another is supposed to guess what it is, one letter at a time. Each miss results in the completion of the hangman drawing; kind of morbid but very essential to the game!

Dots and Boxes is yet another two player game that consists of taking turns, adding a single horizontal or vertical line to an empty grid that consist of just dots. The goal is to become the player with the most completed boxes and as a result the most points. It’s a strategy based puzzle that requires a little bit of thinking.

In contrast, M.A.S.H. is not a game that requires much thought; it's a silly way of telling one's future, which is why it was mostly popular among children. It revolves around a set of groups and categories that tell who the player will be married to, where he/she is going to live, how many kids the player will have, etc. While not to be taken seriously, this game is definitely great for laughs.

So which one of these pencil and pen games did you used to play the most?