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

Author: Roger

I'm a librarian. I hear music, even when it's not being played. I used to work at a comic book store, and it still informs my life. I won once on JEOPARDY! - ditto.

25 thoughts on “B is for the game Boggle (ABC W)”

  1. I must confess that I haven’t heard of this game Roger,
    I am an avid Scrabble player,
    and play every day on-line.
    I love words words words…….and more words…You may have noticed !
    Best regards,
    Di.
    ABCW team.

  2. I haven’t heard of Boggle in years. My wife and I like to play Scrabble with our girls, so I should find one for us to have for game nights. Blessings, my friend!

  3. Rog, love word games, always, so much so, that I when I saw the 4*4, the first thing I did was start typing up the list of words I could come up with.. before scrolling down (thankfully, else would have seen your list!)
    this is a good 4*4 for loads of words..a big bundle of them

  4. Word games are the best! When our children come to visit, they know that there will be a few games of Scrabble being played with Mom, and this last time we played Big Boggle as well. So much fun.

  5. Earl? Looks like a fascinating game. Have to study rules a bit more. What about bunted? Fun to try. Great B post!

  6. Earl? Bunted? Brunt? Looks like fun. Not sure if I understood the rules. (I’m on my 39th comment! How do you do it???? 🙂

  7. Carol – ALL those words are legit. The trick is how many you camn get in the three-minute time frame that nobody else got.

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