Do you know a pangram from a univocalic?

'Word games', says author Tony Augarde, 'exemplify our basic enthusiasm - and need - for play.'

How many types of word game do you know? Use our quick definitions to give yourself a head start.

Acrostic: a poem or puzzle in which the first letters of each line spell out a word, phrase, or name.

A rebus uses pictures, numbers, and letters of the alphabet, to make words and sentences.

Palindrome: a word, phrase, sentence, poem, or longer item which reads the same backwards as it does forwards.

Pangram: a sentence that contains every letter of the alphabet.

Lipogram: a piece of writing that omits a particular letter of the alphabet.

Univocalic: a piece of writing that includes only one of the vowels.

What kind of wordplay is this?

Shall we die?
We shall die all;
All die shall we –
Die all we shall.

Answer: a palindrome. From an epitaph of St Winwalloe's Church at Gunwalloe in Cornwall.

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More absorbing detail on wordplay - everything from puns, acrostics, palindromes, and tongue-twisters are in the new edition of The Oxford Guide to Word Games.