Author Topic: Boggle  (Read 1358 times)

Dragon

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Boggle
« on: January 26, 2022, 23:27:39 »
Tonight, Beth chose Boggle for our half-hour of family fun. Each person has been taking turns choosing something, so it’s not always a favorite for everyone. Personally, Boggle isn’t high on my list of games that I’d choose. Honestly, if it weren’t for my wife wanting to play it, I probably never would, but she really likes this one and she doesn’t mind playing it just one-round at a time. Sometimes we’ll play to a certain score, like 25, and sometimes we’ll play for a certain amount of time, which we did tonight.

In each round, we only have 3 minutes to find all the words that we can in a grid of lettered dice, but it’s the reconciling of lists that takes time. The main thing that takes a while is that we just try out so many random things that sound like they might be words. Sometimes, especially when our youngest daughter, Grace, is playing, we end up with some really wild stuff.

We use www.scrabblewordfinder.o rg as our official judge for valid words, because the form on that site is easiest to work with for quickly comparing words spelled slightly different than the next. Also, unlike the Official Scrabble Dictionary site, this one actually shows you which word you entered, so if you accidentally misspelled it in the website you can double-check after if confirms whether it is valid.

Anyway, this long checking process of going through 20+ made-up words on each players list makes this “3-minute word game” last half an hour just playing a few rounds. We all joked that if words from Dr. Seuss books counted, we’d get more points. Amazingly, we do end up with some of our words being valid, and we often want to know what they meant. A common joke for us also is that some word we’ve made-up is Scottish, since lots of our weird spellings that are valid have that origin.

Well, after just 2-rounds tonight, we had exceeded our time limit and needed to get our kids to bed. Isaac won the game with 18-points. One of the best use of letters that surprised us as valid was AQUAE, since QU are on the same die-facing, which is the plural form of aqua. Unfortunately, Beth had written that one down but was not able to actually connect the letters in the dice tray.
« Last Edit: January 26, 2022, 23:34:20 by Dragon »
"Hello IT. Have you tried turning it off and on again? ... OK, well, the button on the side. Is it glowing?... Yeah, you need to turn it on. Err, the button turns it on. Yeah, you do know how a button works, don't you? No, not on clothes." - Roy (The IT Crowd)

Dragon

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Re: Boggle
« Reply #1 on: March 02, 2022, 17:28:11 »
Yesterday, we played Boggle again. Actually, this is the 3rd time we've played Boggle this year. The 2nd time was on Feb 18th, when Isaac out-did us all, getting 41 points, while Beth had 25, Grace and I had 10, Anna had 5, and Janai had 0.

For our family time yesterday, Beth chose Boggle again. This time, Isaac was unavailable at the beginning. Janai played the 1st round, but then left. Because of that, I've kept track of these rounds separately. Overall, I had the best score between the two rounds, but individually, Isaac had a great round at a time when most of the rest of us struggled.

___Player______R1______R2______Total___
Beth10515
Janai3-3
Isaac-99
Grace8210
Anna314
Nathaniel11516

That was all we played that night, but just considering that one round, I think Isaac is on a winning streak with this game.
"Hello IT. Have you tried turning it off and on again? ... OK, well, the button on the side. Is it glowing?... Yeah, you need to turn it on. Err, the button turns it on. Yeah, you do know how a button works, don't you? No, not on clothes." - Roy (The IT Crowd)