Educational Spelling software

• Nineword is a new game, where you have to create words of 4 or more letters from a group of nine. There is always a 9 letters word possible. Require Gtk+.

• Typist, as described by Freshmeat: Typist is a typing tutor package built using Curses. The package contains a number of tutorials, drills and practice sessions to help with mastering touch typing on the standard computer keyboard. The accent is on the US keyboard layout, but the lessons may also be useful with other layouts. A Dvorak lesson set is included. There are lessons for the Dvorak and Qwerty keyboards. with small and big caps, and some speed tests as well. The tarball extracts in the current directory, and is actually a set of more tarballs for binaries, source, lessons, and man pages.

• Typespeed is a neat little program that has words moving across the screen. It calculates your cps and tells you how good you are doing. You can pick general English words, or Unix commands words.

• for Gnerudite, a scrabble clone for Gnome. Only one player so far, but it is playable. Comes with a dictionary, different background scenes. Counts points automatically, and you can return some or all your tiles and get new ones if you're stuck. Among the things in the works: saving a game to be finished later, and giving hints.

• Linux Letters and numbers From the web site: "It is intended for children 2 and up, and is a fun learning game. It helps younger children learn their letters and numbers, while older children will improve their spelling, and vocabulary skills. It also helps them develop important keyboard and mouse skills too.". Clicking on a letter or a number brings up a picture of something starting with that letter.
  Update February 22, 2000: The game now uses .wav file for sound to go with each pictures. Parents can add their own too.

  LFK's review: A nice game to learn your alphabet. Every time you press a letter or a number, a new window pops up with an image. The game picks the pictures from a predefined location. The pictures are associated simply by the first letter of their names. For example Apples.png and Ants.png for the letter A. You can add your own pictures. (Use The Gimp for that). If there is more than one picture with the matching initial letter, one of them is picked at random. Filenames start with a digit for the numbers pictures.

• xletters Type the words on the keyboard as they fall down the screen, and before they reach the bottom. (Scroll down the linked page to get to xletters)

• Across is a program to generate your own crosswords puzzles.