The Boggle Incident

I recently played Boggle for the first time with some friends at a local bar. I showed up late, my friends had been drinking and playing boggle for a while. I informed them that I had never played, but they insisted I jump right in and try it.

While Boggle appears to be very simple – with its stupid little square board and the stupid little letter cubes let me tell you – IT IS NOT!

Having ONLY been instructed to ‘use the letters to spell words’ they flipped the timer and I was off frantically writing every dense word my little brain could think of. I had simple words like to, on, the and even lengthy words like quest and question. Time was up and I felt pretty good about my list of words. I had no idea how the point system worked (never explained), but I was fairly certain I had gotten at least a couple points for all of my hard work.

We then go around the table and everyone starts reciting their words. I see people crossing off the same words they have on their list, so I mimic their behavior and do the same for my list. We go around the table and finally get to me and (surprisingly enough) I have a number of words left that no one has said yet! At this point I start feeling pretty good. Maybe I really am as smart as my brother tells me!!

Then my boggle world came crashing down around me. One minute I am reciting my words and the next thing I know I am back in middle school with all of the kids pointing and laughing at me. I can feel my face turning bright red, and I’m not even sure what I did to deserve this ridicule! Someone then FINALLY has the decency to explain ALL of the rules to me.

So this is my public service announcement about the rules of Boggle. I would hate for anyone else to have the same horrific experience their first time playing. It's going to be tough for me to get back on the horse after that last try...

The Rules of Boggle (i've highlighted the important ones):
The objective of Boggle is to find assorted words in a small board with assorted tiles. Each tile contains 1 letter. By moving from tile to tile, you can form words. You can start a word from any tile on the board, and as long as the next tile in the word is adjacent to that tile, you can continue the word. You can move forwards, backwords, or diagonally. However, you cannot use the same tile twice in a word. You also cannot cross-over the edge of the board. (for example, moving from the top of the board to the bottom) And, obviously, you cannot use the same word twice in one game. You can also only use words with 3 letters or more.