Was ccleaner supposed to delete Microsoft Paint and Word Pad? How do I get them back now? Sorry if this is an idiotic noob question! Does it delete anything else like the above that I should know about?

No ccleaner was not supposed to do this, it is usually a very safe program.
What operating system do you have?
You could always try a restore point.
Or go to control panel- add and remove programs- add and remove windows componants (lefthand side)- accessories and utilities - details -accessories -details and see if paint is ticked. You may need your windows cd for this.

CCleaner dosent remove paint or word pad and your the only person that has ever reported that happening.
Besides I don't think it removed them anyway.

Go to start>run> type in mspaint.exe

Let me know if paint starts up.

Nope, it didnt. It just said "could not be found...". Still, maybe it wasnt ccleaner... maybe it was noadware? I'll try a restore point.
I have Windows XP Pro SP 2

Go to your Control Panel. Add/Remove Programs > Add/Remove Windows Components > Accessories & Utilities > Accessories > Put a check beside Paint and WordPad.

maybe it wasn't ccleaner? I system restored back to a month, Paint was still missing. Oh, and all the games are missing too, you know, like Pinball.

This is a simple fix if Windows is not messed up. See Tarun's post.

Thank you! Everything came back, including the games. So it wasn't ccleaner after all was it? If not, what could have caused it?

It would depend on what programs you ran. There are some that will help uninstall things like Paint, Windows Messenger and more. There are programs like xp-AntiSpy and many others.

Do you know what programs you used that may have caused this, or roughly what programs you ran when you encountered this issue?