Printable Pencil Games, Puzzles, Brain Teasers

I love pencil games - I've been a pencil puzzle fan since childhood. I enjoy solving mazes, crosswords, word find puzzles, hangman games, dot to dot and rebus puzzles. Newer puzzle games like Sudoku present a real challenge and are probably the most popular pencil games in the world right now.

Many popular pencil games are now available for Kindle and other e-devices - take your games with you and play anywhere.

What's your favorite pencil game: Crosswords, Sudoku, Word Find, Dot to Dot, Cryptograms, Logic Puzzles, Brain Teasers, Hidden Pictures - they're all here in this collection of pencil puzzle games.

Kids and adults both enjoy pencil puzzles ... they're fun, you can take them anywhere, they're quiet and they give your brain a work out.

If I have a pencil puzzle magazine in my bag, I don't fret so much when I have to wait a bit for my dental appointment, auto service or when my flight is delayed. And, unlike my phone or Kindle Fire, a pencil puzzle book never runs out of battery life.

The web sites and blogs in this recommended pencil games collection offer a big selection of print and gol games for adults and children. Pick and choose your favorites from the different types of pencil puzzles for kids and grownups from the links below - each site was personally reviewed.

My 82-year old mother is amazingly good at Sudoku. She's a retired accountant and has a knack for number games. She prefers to play these games with pencil and paper instead of using her Kindle. Go figure ...

Sudoku games are all the rage, with adults and kids of all ages all over the world.

Sudoku puzzles are one of the newest and most popular pencil games. Find free printable Sudoku puzzles for adults and children in this list of printable Sudoku games.

Kindle makes the joy of reading on the go lightweight and simple. Carry your favorite books, magazines, newspapers and puzzle books with you when you travel without any extra weight, bulk or baggage. With Kindle Fire models, watch video, television, check Facebook, snap photos and listen to music. All the benefits of an iPad at far lower cost.

Sharpen your pencil and your wits by solving a crossword puzzle with a theme.

NYT crossword puzzles are considered the absolute best in the world. You can buy them in books or find them online.

NY Times Crosswords for a Lazy Day

Some pencil games are strictly intended for solo personal enjoyment while others can be worked with a partner or a team to join in the puzzle-solving fun. I prefer the good old-fashioned type worked solo in a paperback book, newspaper page or printed from my computer to use offline, but with new apps for smartphones and tablet computers you can play popular games just about anywhere.

Whatever your preference in puzzles and games, you're sure to find plenty of fun here to tackle at home or on a trip. I love to work on crossword puzzles while at the beach or when I travel by rail, bus or plane. I recently added Sudoku to my Kindle Fire.

Print and solve these free crossword puzzle games.

My older daughter has loved word find and word search puzzles since she was 10 years old. She still plays word search games, sometimes with a computer and sometimes as a pencil puzzle.

Ciphers, codes and cryptographic puzzles really challenge the brain. I loved decoding cryptograms as a kid.

Be a code breaker cryptographer! Solve ciphers and cryptograms using logic, pattern recognition and knowledge of grammar and spelling to find hidden messages in these pencil puzzle favorites.

Text messages remind me of word-based rebus puzzle phrases. The most challenging rebus puzzles are composed from pictures combined with words.

Solve the puzzle by decoding the meaning of the combined pictures, symbols and words in each rebus puzzle. Some rebus puzzles are made up only of words with unique positioning or size to provide clues to the solution.

For example: this is rebus puzzle solves to the meaning "head over heels"

HEAD

HEELS

A whole book of challenging and fun pencil puzzles designed for kids!

Be a word detective! Apply logical thinking and systematic solution methods to solve these challenging puzzles. Logic puzzles lend themselves to pencil and paper so you can organize the clues, chart your possible solutions and keep track of the facts you've connected or eliminated.

When I was a kid our family dinners were lively and filled with conversation. Dad would often give us a logic problem to solve over dinner. That was how we learned to think and eat at the same time. No pencils allowed for these dinner table logic games!

My grandson shares my passion for solving hidden picture puzzles. I've been shopping around to find a good library of hidden picture game books he can play with when he visits me.

If you enjoy working crosswords, mazes, word search puzzles, soduko or other pencil games or puzzles let me know. Got a favorite place to find free printable pencil puzzles? Drop me a note via my contact button so I can check it out to add it to this article.