Shake, rattle and roll...then look for the words (Boggle)

Member Name: mrjoegoodwin

Product:	Boggle
Date:	25/05/09 (11 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Portable, quick, easy to play

Disadvantages: Frustrating when everyone has the same words as you...but that's your own fault. Try harder!

Boggle is another popular word game, and one of the 'rivals' to Scrabble in that respect. Played without a board, it's the perfect game for taking on holiday or on a long journey, as you only need a few pencils, some paper, and the game itself, which is small enough to take anywhere.

Boggle is played in a series of 3 minute rounds, with the winner being the first person to score a specified number of points (e.g. first to 50 wins). Other variations could involve playing a specific number of rounds, one round per participant, or similar.

Taking the plastic container in hand, the first player gives the letters a good shake, and shuffles everything about until all letters lie flat in one of the 4 x 4 squares that comprise the playing area.

Starting the timer, it's your job to make as many words as possible of 3 letters or more from the 16 letters on display. That doesn't really tell you how to make words though, so let's try to explain. As with my Scrabble review, I'm hindered by not being able to insert diagrams as a visual aid, so this is the best I can do!

On my turn, I shake the following 4 x 4 combination:

B A S H
E R N M
Z O I E
P P S Y

Straight away, a 4 letter word jumps out - I can connect the letters B, A, S and H to form 'BASH'. Any combination that forms 3 or 4 letter words score you 1 point (in theory...more on points scoring later).

You can also connect letters in a diagonal fashion, so E, A and R to make 'EAR'. While you're in that corner of the board, add the 'B' to make 'BEAR', and the 'S' for the plurals of both those words. (EARS, BEARS).

Ok, how about a 5 letter word...I can see 'BRINE' and 'POISE' right away, they give me 2 points for a slightly longer combination of letters. Getting the hang of it? Keep going! That 3 minutes will race by, and you have to scribble pretty quickly to get down as many combinations as possible. Once the time has run out, pens down, and on with scoring.

Remember the 'in theory' part of my 4 letter word combination earlier? Well, Boggle only rewards you for words that you spot that nobody else does. Harsh eh? So, because 'BASH', 'EAR', 'BEAR', 'BEARS', 'EARS' and 'BRINE' were also spotted by a rival player, I don't score any points for those. In fact, my only unique word in this example was 'POISE', so I score 2 points for the round.

Words must be in the dictionary, or if you haven't got one to hand, mutually agreeable my the majority of people playing the game. Whilst the temptation in Boggle is to focus on the longer words that score higher points, you should also adopt a 'cover yourself' tactic and put down every single word of 3 or 4 letters too, to make sure that a) nobody else can score points - you will cancel their score out if your words are the same, and b) you never know, sometimes the small word combinations get missed by other players, and you might just score some easy points.

My tactic is to focus on a particular area of the board, and then exhaust it of as many possibilities as I can before moving elsewhere. See my EAR -> BEARS example for a quick way to rack up some potential points from just the top left part of the playing area.

Boggle is very easy to play, but hard to master, and every turn provides a different challenge. Sometimes, you will get a shake that gives you hundreds of word possibilities, other times you'll be scratching around to find more than half a dozen - that's the challenge that Boggle provides with every game.

It's a cheap game (under £10), is very portable and can be played quickly, so make sure this is a game that you have in your collection.

Summary: A fun word based game to keep your brain engaged