Word Whiz

The Good
Apogee Software's Word Whiz is yet another quiz game created by Scott Miller who also brought us The Astronomy Quiz, The IBM BASIC Quiz, and The Computer Quiz, with all three relying on our knowledge of astronomy, computers, and a programming language. The game consists of four volumes, with the first volume being shareware. Back in the day, you needed to send a small fee to Miller to get the rest. In the 2000’s, all four volumes were released as freeware, and understandably so: Miller’s address is either non-existent now or there is somebody else living there.

After the player selects whether the game reveals the correct answers, they are presented with four multiple choice questions. Although this is a far cry from Trivia Whiz, where the author assumes that you are an American who does nothing in his life but watch TV shows and follow sport, Word Whiz assumes that you lived part of your life reading the entire dictionary and memorizing each word off by heart. A statement with one word in uppercase appears, and you must select the correct definition of the word from the four options listed.

An incorrect answer is regarded as a “miss”. A big plus is that you are allowed twenty incorrect answers in each volume. Do good work, and you will gain an extra “miss”. Run out of free misses, and it's game over. The program then lists some references that you can look up for a chance to succeed next time.

Another plus for Word Whiz is the inclusion of ranks, which are displayed in the top-right corner of the screen. The more questions you get correct, the more chance your rank will increase. I believe the farthest I got up to was “College Graduate Level”, which is not the maximum rank you get. Your rank will decrease as you get more and more answers wrong. One time I got so low I was called a “Word Wimp”.

The Bad
The game has the same issues as Miller’s previous offerings: you will be sent back to DOS if you run out of misses. Also, the interface and sound effects are limited. Also, running Word Whiz on anything higher than a 286 will cause it to run very fast.

The Bottom Line
Word Whiz is one of the programs in the long line of quiz-based ones from Apogee in its early days; and in my opinion, it is better than their previous offerings, particularly Trivia Whiz. You are presented with a word and have to find a similar word from one of the four option listed. The game will run very fast on anything other than an XT, although this won't stop you enjoying it.