Challenge Yourself with a Solo Game of Boggle
Written: Feb 04 '01 (Updated Mar 01 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: any number of people can play, it's fast-paced, and it works your brain
Cons: extremely loud to 'shuffle' the cubes
The Bottom Line: Boggle is fun and challenging. Once a child begins to learn to spell, he or she can begin playing. It's very easy to learn, and no two games are alike.
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| Caspian's Full Review: Boggle |
I love playing Boggle, and lately my wife and I have tried a simple variation to the game.
First of course, I must give a nutshell explanation of what Boggle is... ahem. A regular Boggle game, which is what I play, and what is pictured to the right of this opinion, is what I'll be describing. The game pieces consist of 16 letter cubes, a grid on which the cubes fit, a 'dome' for the grid and a 3-minute timer. The cubes have a letter on each of its 6 sides, so when you rattle them around and then make them fit properly on the grid, you will get any given combination of letters. Some games come with an extra "challenge cube" which you can use in place of one of the regular cubes. The letters in the challenge cube are harder to use in making words.
The object of the game is to form as many 3-letter and higher words in 3 minutes as you can. To find words, you can go in any direction you want, but each consecutive letter has to touch the previous one, and you can't use the same cube twice in the same word. Your opponents try to find words in the same 3-minute time period, and when time is up, you read your list of words out loud, and cross off identical words that any two players found, and keep only the words that no one else but you found. Then you add up the points. A 3-letter and 4-letter word is one point, 5 is two points, 6 is three, 7 is five, and words with 8 or more letters is 11 points.
I know, my explanation is clear as mud. Maybe an example below would help. Here is a combination of letters you could get, which just so happen to be the combination in Epinion's picture of Boggle above.
T S M L
R V E O
T A C K
E E U T
OK, One word that jumps out at me right away is TACK. They are in line, and each letter in consecutive order. You can spell CAT by going backwards, using the letters in TACK. Since I can go in any direction, I can start with the letter T at the top left corner, and spell TRAVEL. I had to go in different directions for that one, but as you can see each letter had at least a corner touching the previous letter. I can't use the S to pluralize TRAVEL because the S is not touching the L at all. The next letter in a word always has to be touching the previous letter.
What I can't do is use the same letter twice in one word. I would like to start with the L and spell LEAVES, but I would have to use the same E twice. And I can't hop down and use any of the other E's because they would need to be touching the V.
The Boggle game my wife and I use is a borrowed one, and the 3-minute timer doesn't work. The grains of sand in the timer are too coarse or they're damp, because they constantly stop pouring unless we keep jostling it, so three minutes can stretch into twenty easily. We have tried using a stopwatch, but that is harder to keep track of and reset every time.
So the way we play now is that we just try to find all the words we can, and when both of us are stumped for at least one minute without finding another word, we stop and see if either of us found words the other didn't. It takes the pressure off trying to find words fast, and helps us make the effort to find longer, more unusual words.
It's amazing how many words you can find in any given set of letters. A long time ago I tried to find all the words in the combination pictured on the box of my Boggle game. I lost my paper, but I remember I found about 89 words, worth over 100 points total. Most of the words were 3-letter words. This is the combination pictured on my Boggle box:
S G H B
T A I M
E U R O
D C L A
If someone finds all the words in that combination, let me know. One thing you can't use as words in Boggle is proper names, or words you normally would have to capitalize, or abbreviations. Just common nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc..
So, if you don't have someone you can play a game of Boggle with, you can always play solo. I tried to find all the words in the combination pictured on the box in the picture above (the first set I gave you, with the word TACK in it) and I found 69 words, for a total of 97 points. And I'm sure I missed at least one. It's kind of fun, anyway.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): borrowed. :)
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Epinions.com ID:
Caspian
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Member: Ben Hesser
Location: The United States of Alaska
Reviews written: 41
Trusted by: 16 members
About Me:
Coming soon...........
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