Boggle Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

Changing up the morning ritual

Quordle

Daily Quordle #51
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quordle.com
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I’ve been changing up the morning ritual in the past, lessee, two years. Formerly, I would get up, check the email, and perhaps work on the blog, But at 7 a.m., my wife and I would go downstairs and watch CBS This Morning, now CBS Mornings, to watch “your world in ninety seconds.”

When the headlines were unrelentingly about COVID – the spread of COVID, the death toll of COVID – I sometimes passed on the opportunity to start my day with misery. Presently, I’ve been feeling similarly about Ukraine. I guess I’m more equipped to deal with distress in the evening. Besides, I tend to get enough news from various news outlets during the day.

Instead, I do the daily Wordle. I should note that my wife is MUCH better at this than I am, just as she’s better at Boggle. My daughter is better, too. Wordle has become an odd family bonding experience.

I’ve repeatedly told my wife she’d rule on Wheel of Fortune. We actually have the home game, a consolation prize from when on JEOPARDY! and our comparative scores prove my point. But at least we all still have our Wordle streaks going, unlike some people.

FOUR words

Then I attempt Quordle. The first several times I never got the four words in the nine tries. My mistake was to work it like I played Wordle. I know now to try to expose as many letters by finding three or even four words that hit most of the consonants. I’ve been much more successful.

After wishing my wife goodbye, I go back into the office. The cats want to be fed. I HAD been giving them nourishment at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. But with the stupid time change, if I attend them at 7 and 7, when we “fall back”, they’d be caterwauling to get food at 6 and 6.

This is just one reason that I’m OK with the idea of changing to permanent Daylight Saving Time, even though it’ll be dark on December mornings. I’ve made my feelings about changing the clocks quite clear here. (I’m essentially agreeing with Marco Rubio; this pains me.)

After finally feeding the felines, I take my blood pressure and my pulse to make sure I’m not dead. THEN I eat. The rest is the usual alternating of email/blogging to music, riding the stationary bike while watching TV (JEOPARDY, 60 Minutes, Finding Your Roots, Trevor Noah, et al), washing the dishes/reading the newspaper to music. This may be altered by a medical appointment, Bible study, grocery shopping, or the eternal “something else,” that unexpected task that sucks up hours in the day.

The George Rowan project

greegree

When I was in college, looking for a pseudonym, just in case, I mixed up the letters in Roger Owen Green. It came out as George R.N. Roween. George was obvious. When I was in high school, two of the guys I hung out with were named George. A young woman in our group started calling ME George, much to my irritation.

But linguistically, it sort of made sense. George and Roger both have R, O, G, and E. George Roween, though, sounded weird, so I changed it to George Rowan. There was a black syndicated columnist named Carl Rowan (1925-2000) who I used to watch on the news panel program Agronsky and Company.

Anyway, for my half birthday, plus a day, I decided to find all the words in Roger Owen Green, and define the ones I don’t know, generated by some website. The only 8-letter word is greegree, which is an African amulet

7 letters:
engorge greener regreen reneger renewer regorge regrown
wronger – One who wrongs someone. But NOT the comparative term for wrong

The six-letter words

erenow, which my spellcheck does not like. (archaic, literary) before this time; heretofore
gorger – yes, it is one who gorges. But it’s also the Romani term for non-Romani
nonego – anything not considered to be the ego or conscious self; a thing external to the mind.
nooner
orgone – a substance postulated by Wilhelm Reich, who thought it was present everywhere and needed to be incorporated in people for sexual activity and mental health

orogen – an extensive belt of rocks deformed by orogeny, associated in places with plutonic and metamorphic rocks.
regrew regrow renege renown
wonner – an inhabitant, an occupant (in British English, archaic); no wonder my spellcheck didn’t like it

The five-letter words

These will be good for playing Boggle
egger – one that collects the eggs of wild birds especially for gain.
error genre
genro – the elder statesmen of Japan who formerly advised the emperor
goner gorge green
grego – a coarse warm jacket or coat with a hood formerly worn by seamen
grown newer
ngwee – a monetary subunit of the kwacha (Zambia)

noone – Nonstandard spelling of no one. “Noone is formed in parallel to the formation of nobody, anyone, and everyone, but it is not preferred because of the doubled vowels creating a temptation to read and pronounce it as “noon” Noone reminds me of Peter Noone, the lead of Herman’s Hermits s.
owner renew reorg rewon roger
rowen – a second growth of grass or hay in one season
rower wooer wrong

The four-letter words

eger -from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English. (noun) An impetuous flood; a bore. (adjective) obsolete Sharp; bitter; acid; sour. My spellcheck hates this word.
enow – enough
ergo
erne – sea eagle
ewer – a pitcher with a wide spout; I used to know that one

gene goer
gogo – a discotheque, nightclub, etc., with go-go music and dancing. I always spelled it with a hyphen or as two words
gore
gorg – species of amphibian which were eaten alive by members of the Hutt species. They were available for seven wupiupi in the markets of Mos Espa on the planet Tatooine. (No wonder my spellcheck loathed this.) The Urban Dictionary: short for the word gorgeous

gree – mastery, superiority (Scotland); agree
grog gone goon gown gong grew grow
neer – an unpunctuated version of ne’er, for never. But it’s not in the Scrabble dictionary.
nene – the Hawaiian goose, branta sandvicensis, which was designated the state bird of Hawaii in 1957. (Which was before it was a state, but whatever…)
neon

nero – it’s black in Italian, and capitalized, it’s the fifth emperor of Rome
nogg – a shave for shaping dowels and handles.
none
nong – a foolish, incompetent person (Australian and New Zealand Informal); a Scrabble word.
noon

ogee – a molding with an S-shaped profile; a pointed arch having on each side a reversed curve near the apex
ogre
oner – something unique or extraordinary (British). Is it acceptable in Scrabble? Depends
ooer – (Britain) said to acknowledge a double entendre or something that sounds rude. NOT a Scrabble word
rone – (British English/Scottish) – a drainpipe or gutter for carrying rainwater from a roof. Most Scrabble sources say yes.

ween – (archaic) to hold as an opinion
weer – comparative of wee; 2 syllables
were wore worn wren

The three-letter words

egg ego
eng – the symbol, ŋ, that, in the International Phonetic Alphabet and in the pronunciation alphabets of some dictionaries, represents the voiced velar nasal consonant indicated in English spelling by (ng), as in the pronunciations of cling [kling] and clink [klingk].
eon ere
erg -the centimeter-gram-second unit of work or energy, equal to the work done by a force of one dyne when its point of application moves through a distance of one centimeter in the direction of the force; 10−7 joule. I actually DID remember this word from HS physics but I couldn’t remember the definition.
ern – alternative spelling of erne (see above)
err ewe gee gen geo goo

gor – interjection British Dialect. (used as a mild oath.) (used as an exclamation of surprise or disbelief.) Think OMG. Scrabbleworthy.
nee new nog non nor now oer one
ono – adj. Hawaii. Delicious; tasty.
ore owe own
ree – (agriculture, Scottish archaic) a walled enclosure for sheep, cattle, and pigs. OK for Scrabble
reg

reo – a language in New Zealand?
roe
roo – a kangaroo
row wee
wen – an abnormal growth or a cyst protruding from a surface especially of the skin
woe won woo

And finally

ee – an eye. Valid Scrabble word
en er ew go ne no
oe – a whirlwind near the Faeroe Islands
oo (obsolete) The Greek letter omega; any of four Hawaiian birds of the genus Moho, formerly classed with the honeyeaters and now believed to be extinct.
or ow re we
wo – A falconer‘ s call to a hawk; A call to cause a horse to slow down or stop; whoa; Archaic Variant of woe.

Lydster: Boggling Boggle play

competitive

On our recent vacation in the Berkshires, we brought along the word game Boggle. I described it four years ago here.

We played twice in three days. The first time my wife won. She ALWAYS wins. It’s not that she knows more words as much as she can SEE more combinations. I’ve told her for years that, if luck allowed, she’d kill me on the TV game show Wheel of Fortune.

As I noted, a few years ago, we used to give our daughter an advantage. The parents wouldn’t count any of the three-letter words we found, only the longer ones. We have revoked that accommodation.

And still, she’d regularly beat me, coming in second to her mother. After coming second last time, she started studying the letters. I don’t know how this would help her, since the dice land randomly.

Yet, in the next game, she started with more than a 10-point lead, finding words that were obvious in retrospect, but which her parents just didn’t see. And ultimately, she won the game.

She’s Got Game

I’ve always tried to play games with her competitively at the point when she had a fair chance of beating me. Whether it be Connect Four or another game, she plays to win.

When we play the board/card game Sorry, her strategy hanging around the starting point, hoping for a back 4, and or two 10s that she could use as back 1s, has occasionally been adopted by her parents.

No hearts

But I’ve not yet gotten her to regularly play any of the card games I know. Sure, hearts, spades, pinochle, and the like require more than two players. But I still haven’t shown her the joy of cribbage.

I may try to teach her backgammon this summer. Since I’ve retired, I’ve become rusty, and playing on the tablet is not an adequate substitute.

It’s also true that if/when she goes off to college, this might put her in good stead. Do college kids still play board games and cards? How about Yahtzee online?

B is for the game Boggle (ABC W)

While this is a 4X4 Boggle cube, there are 5X5 cubes as well.

Boggle, Wikipedia says, is a “word game… using a plastic grid of lettered dice, in which players attempt to find words in sequences of adjacent letters.

“The game begins by shaking a covered tray of 16 cubic dice, each with a different letter printed on each of its six sides. The dice settle into a 4×4 tray so that only the top letter of each cube is visible.

“After they have settled into the grid, a three-minute sand timer is started and all players…” search “for words that can be constructed from the letters of sequentially adjacent cubes… -horizontally, vertically, and diagonally neighboring.

“Words must be at least three letters long, may include singular and plural (or other derived forms) separately, but may not use the same letter cube more than once per word.

“Each player records all the words he or she finds by writing on a private sheet of paper. After three minutes have elapsed, all players must immediately stop writing and the game enters the scoring phase.

“In the scoring phase, each player reads off his or her list of discovered words. If two or more players wrote the same word, it is removed from all players’ lists… For all words remaining after duplicates have been eliminated, points are awarded based on the length of the word. The winner is the player whose point total is highest.”

When the Daughter was younger, and we played at home, we let her find three-letter words (for which she would get 1 point) as well as 4 letters (2 points), et al. while her mother and I could use words only four letters (1 point) or more. Now I’m not sure I’d give her that advantage.

While this is a 4X4 cube, there are 5X5 cubes as well.

There are SCRABBLE dictionaries that can be used to ascertain the validity of a word.

You’ll find Boggle online here and here and undoubtedly, elsewhere.

From the letters above, some of the words one could find include:

bead, bear, bent, bred, bunt, darn, dead, dare, deal, dear, earn, near, lane, lard, lure, rare, read, real, rear, rent, rued, rune, teal, tear, tern, tube, tuna, tune, turn

beard, bread, brute, dread, laden, renal, tuber, tuned

ranted

bearded, breaded, dreaded

Can you find others? There is at least one more 7-letter word.

ABC Wednesday – Round 20