Warning! This is addictive! (Joggle)

Member Name: missbrowneyedgirl

Product:	Joggle
Date:	02/08/01 (197 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: addictive, free, fun

Disadvantages: addictive, not as good as 'the real thing'

'Joggle? What's Joggle?', I hear you ask. Well, let me tell you...

Let me take you back to the 80s. Remember all those board games you had? Scrabble, Othello, Buckaroo, The Game of Life and Operation. But what was that funny one that cam in a clear plastic cube? You remember, it was full of little 'dice' that had letters on and you shook them up, then when they settled into the grid at the bottom you made words from them. Ah, that was Boggle, which logically rings me right back to where we started... Joggle!

Joggle, presumably to avoid any fracas through use of the original name, is an online version of Boggle and a rather cleverly done one at that.

There are a few ways to play on the site. Firstly is the fully playable demonstration version. You can find this at http://www.pixelsharp.com/projects/joggle/demo.htm l.
Now be patient whilst it loads, as the page has to load each of the letters in their on and off states. When the page is loaded the 'Start' button will appear under the main grey square.

This I suppose is where the online version loses some of the fun of the original. The start button replaces the bit where you would pick Boggle up, shake it and make that incredibly loud plastic clattering noise! Nonetheless, the start button has pretty much the same result, namely that you end up with a 5x5 square grid of letters.

The aim of the game is to make as many words of four letters or more in 3 minutes. You make words by using horizontally or vertically (but not horizontally) adjacent letters. You can only use each letter once in a word, unless there is more than one of those letters on the grid. Now, here comes the first clever bit.

To start making a word, you click on the first letter on the grid. It will turn green the you simply move (not drag) your mouse over the rest of the letters in order, which will in turn change to green. To end the word, just click on the last lett
er and the word will be moved into the word list frame to the right. Incidentally plurals are allowed.

At any time during the game you can click the time countdown, which is where the Start button was, to pause the game. Pausing removes the grid display so you can't cheat that way!

At the end of the time, the countdown turns into a New Game button and beneath you Word list appears a Score button. You may have to scroll down to see this if you have made a lot of words. Now here's the nest clever bit. Pressing the score button checks the words you have made against the online dictionary and gives you two scores: one for the number of words you made and one for their respective points.
You score points as follows
4 letter word - 1 point
5 letter word - 2 points
6 letter word - 3 points
7 letter word - 5 points
8 letter word - 11 points

Any words that are not in the dictionary will appear will a strike through it, as though it has been crossed off your list.

Once you are bored of this version, which will probably be in a bout six weeks if you are anything like me...;), follow the link in the last bullet point on the game page (To return to the home page, click here). This will take you to the main Joggle site. You must register to use it but it is a simple registration process and I can vouch that they don't spam your email box.

The main site has several addition features such as messages and forums in addition to different game playing modes. You can play two player Joggle, join a tournament, join a challenge or simply carry on playing solo. The rules are fairly much the same except for you are not allowed toy pause the game on the main site. If you try to it will reduce your time remaining to 5 seconds!

Overall this is a brilliant free resource. Hopefully, I will see you all there sometime soon...;)

Summary: