A woman sick of sitting for hours in motorway traffic jams cured her boredom by creating an award-winning board game.

Carolyn Pearce used the tedious time she spent travelling to work dreaming up a Scrabble-influenced game she called Ingenuity.

However, even her wildest flights of fancy failed to predict it would become an award-winning game stocked on the shelves of Harrods and Hamleys.

Ingenuity challenges players to solve conundrums and anagrams within 90 seconds, before spelling out words using cards marked with letters.

Points are scored according to the value of the letters used. The game ends when someone reaches 250 points or manages a ten-letter word.

Dictionaries are not allowed - but Carolyn relied on a pocket Oxford English in her glovebox while planning the game.

Carolyn, 37, of Coombe Crescent in Bury, near Arundel, found inspiration while driving to work in Lewes from her former home in Farnborough.

She said: "I spent ages stuck on the M25 every day, so I used the time to develop my board game ideas.

"I would flick through my dictionary picking out words and devising conundrum clues while sitting in traffic jams."

She was made redundant from her vitamins manufacturing firm in January 1999 and started drawing up firm proposals for the game.

She teamed up with a Haywards Heath marketing firm, which helped transfer her ideas from scraps of paper to an impressively-packaged product.

They carried out market research to fine-tune the game and its design but it was friends and family who made the best focus groups.

Carolyn said: "The reaction was generally positive but people came up with ways to improve the rules and the game-play.

"We still play the game a lot, particularly after dinner with friends."

Ingenuity was launched at the International Toy and Hobby Fair at London's Olympia in 2000, where it won the award for best new game.

Since then Carolyn has convinced Harrods, Hamleys and Debenhams to sell the game, and is now targeting smaller firms in time for Christmas.

London cable channel TwoWay TV has developed an interactive form of the game.

Carolyn and husband David are now putting the final touches to proposals for a TV version.

However, Carolyn sees her board game adventures as a welcome addition to looking after her children, five-year-old Hannah and 21-month-old William.

She said: "It's nice to be able to use your brain rather than just changing nappies all day."