How to Make Your Own Word Scrambles for a Baby Shower

Choosing baby-themed words will give your word scramble a theme and make it easier to solve.

Baby-related word scrambles are a great baby shower activity. A word scramble is a brain teaser in the form of a list of words whose letters have been scrambled. The goal is to unscramble the letters to find the original words. If your friends are the competitive type, you can even use the word scramble as a contest with a small prize for the first person to unscramble the whole list.

Things You'll Need

• Word processing software
• Printer

Instructions

1. Brainstorm a list of words related to babies and pregnancy. Try to come up with a range of word lengths. You may even want to include some two-word phrases, such as "baby carriage."

2. Pick your favorite words from the brainstorm list. The number of words depends on how long you want the activity to last, but 12 to 15 words is a reasonable length.

3. List one word per line, rearranging the letters of each word in a random order. For phrases of two or more words, write the whole phrase on one line, leave spaces between the words, and scramble each word separately. For example, "baby carriage" could become "aybb aragceir."

4. Press the Tab key a few times after each word, then type or paste a series of 25 to 30 underscores (_) to create a blank line people can use to fill in their answers.

5. Print enough copies for all your guests, plus a few extra.

Tips & Warnings

• If you have trouble scrambling the letters in a word, write the word on a piece of paper in its regular form. Roll a die, count that many letters along the word (looping back to the first letter when you reach the end), then cross out the letter you land on and write it as the first letter of the scramble. Repeat the process, skipping crossed out letters, until you've crossed out the whole word.