Mark McGhee has invented a smartphone game aimed at reducing the boredom of footballers travelling to matches.

His word puzzle game is set to be launched as an app around the world.

McGhee, 59, came up with a word game when he played for the Dons under Sir Alex Ferguson in the 1980s.

He recently took the idea to Papertank, a web development company in Glasgow, which created a prototype digital version.

The gamer is shown 16 pairs of initials and has to think of someone famous for each of them. For example – NS for Nicola Sturgeon.

The screen is refreshed after each answer and a running total grows.

McGhee wanted to create an electronic version after playing Scrabble with Scotland boss Gordon Strachan on trips with the national team.

He showed the digital version to Chris van der Kuyl, the Scottish entrepreneur who helped to develop Minecraft, who really liked it.

McGhee has now entered into a partnership with DC Thomson’s Puzzler.

The game will be called Puzzler Name Game and is expected to be on iTunes, Google Play and Amazon early next month.

McGhee said: “Gordon and I were playing so much Scrabble that we started to get a little bit tired of it and one night I suggested resurrecting the game.

“I came away from that thinking ‘in this day and age there might be the makings of something in this’.

“I went to Chris with the first phone version. He said, ‘I get it’. Right away he said it was competitive, brilliant, a proper game’.”

Tony Ablewhite, Puzzler’s digital media manager, added: “It was an intriguing story in terms of how the concept came about, with Mark using bits of paper to keep players entertained on a bus.

“Anybody can play this and you watch them getting hooked. I get lots of ideas presented to me and this is the first one I’ve bought into as a concept that we would definitely invest in. It’s got the right ingredients to be big.”