AN entrepreneur who created a board game called Whirred Play to entertain his family at Christmas has launched it commercially.

Phil Annets, 45, of King's Orchard, Brightwell-cum-Sotwell, developed the game as family fun for his wife and children.

But when he showed it to friends they said it was so good he should put it on the market.

The game has had an official launch at Pettits department store in Wallingford. It is also on sale at Boswells in Oxford and Wallingford Post Office, ahead of a possible nationwide roll-out for Christmas next year.

The game, priced £29.99, is based on words which sound the same but are spelt differently, known as homophones.

In devising it, Mr Annets found 450 such words, including “write”, “right” and “wright”, and “bye”, “by”, “buy” and “bi”.

Players have to guess which spelling of the word will be selected by the fewest opponents, earning points and moving round the board for the least popular solutions.

Mr Annets said: “The beauty of the game is that no two times you can have the same outcome. People quickly realise it is all about bluffing your opponents.

“It is about guessing what other people are going to do, bluffing them and double-bluffing them."

He added: “I tried it out at a party where I did not really know many people to see if they liked it.

“They enjoyed playing it, and wanted to play it again."

Mr Annets has previously invented several other games, including a version of fantasy football which he plays with friends each season, but has never launched one on the commercial market.

Wife Caroline and sons Edward, 14, and Stephen, 12, who are pupils at Wallingford School, helped him develop the idea, refining it before it was put into production.

Pettits store manager Kevin Willis said: “We have had quite a lot of interest, even though it is not the best time of year to launch board games. People seem to like it.

lsloan@oxfordmail.co.uk