Stephen Howell is a computer science lecturer with the Institute of Technology Tallaght, Ireland. He is a computing graduate of Dublin City University and has developed software for a number of companies including Sapient and IBM. Language or word based casual games are becoming increasingly popular, but many of the game-play mechanics rely on spelling and word searching. This sub-genre of casual games is also targeted by serious games developers, but in their current 'spelling-bee' form they are not ideal tools for pedagogical assessment. Incorporating meta-data about linguistic constructs and their relationships would enable creative uses of existing corpora in games. The design of the game and the approach to data generation is described.
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