Talk:Boggle

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Boggle article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Board and table games Low‑importance

	Games portal This article is part of WikiProject Board and table games, an attempt to better organize information in articles related to board games and tabletop games. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.Board and table gamesWikipedia:WikiProject Board and table gamesTemplate:WikiProject Board and table gamesboard and table game articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Untitled

Is Boggle Ultimate played widely? It's consuming a large amount of space in the article, and I'd like reassurance that it's played outside Oregon. Ventura 16:30, 2004 Aug 4 (UTC)

I've never heard of "Boggle Ultimate", but it is mildly interesting and I vote to keep the description of the rules. I'm less interested in the strategy section, because it doesn't give me any useful information about how to decide when to turn over the timer. Personally, I expect that the quicker player would always turn over the timer immediately. When I played with my sister in high school, our standard Boggle timer was broken, so we used timers borrowed from other games. When we used a timer of 2.5 minutes I won nearly every game, and when we used a timer of 3.5 minutes she won nearly every game. I was quicker but her vocabulary was larger. Therefore, if I played "Boggle Ultimate" against my sister, I would immediately turn over the timer on every game, and it would be no different than regular Boggle. Yawn. Maybe the whole section can be compressed to two sentences. --Fritzlein 18:38, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I've removed the Boggle Ultimate section. Unless there is verification that this variant is well known, it should not be reinstated. Peter O. (Talk, automation script) 00:29, Jan 1, 2005 (UTC)

Boggle Variants

I added information about Boggle variants, including some details I'm not entirely sure about.

1) I changed the Boggle Master section to state that SOME editions of "Boggle Master" include the optional 4x4 adapter. My copy of Boggle Master was not sold with an adapter.

2) I added the "Boggle Challenge Cube" variant. I purchased this set used, and it included only 16 cubes (15 white cubes, plus the red challenge cube). From the picture on the box, I believe this set was originally sold with a total of 17 cubes (the standard 16 white cubes plus the extra red cube). If anyone can confirm this, I would be interested.

3) I added the "Body Boggle" variant. I have this game, and have read the instructions, but have never been inclined to play it.

4) I added the "Boggle Bowl" section. I have NOT seen this game recently, nor have I read the rules. I'm only guessing that it is vaguely like Scrabble.

5) I have not seen Math Boggle game myself, but I remember seeing it on eBay years ago. If anyone can confirm or deny its existance, I would be interested.

6) Are there other variants I don't know about? I seem to recall seeing "French Boggle" once, but I don't feel confident about that one. Please let me know if you have information about others.

I think regular Boggle (4x4 or 5x5) is a wonderful game, but these ill-conceived variants are just interesting peculiarities.

Trivia entry may not be correct for all versions of boggle

Harkening back to my ill-spent youth, I distinctly recalled forming inappropriate words that started with 'F' and rhymed with "truck". So, I dusted off my Boggle game, and here are my dice:

V-I-T-E-G-N
A-C-E-S-L-R
V-A-Z-E-D-N
I-C-A-T-A-O
N-O-D-U-K-T
E-N-I-P-H-S
O-R-I-F-B-X
K-U-L-E-G-Y
E-Y-I-E-H-F
E-S-U-T-L-P
E-W-O-S-D-N
P-E-C-A-D-M
A-L-I-B-T-Y
S-A-H-O-M-R
J-A-B-O-M-Qu
U-R-I-G-L-W

As you can see, 'K' and 'F', while occurring only once each, occur on separate die. At least they do in my set. Unfortunately, there does not appear to be anything to indicate the age of my game except that I've had it for as long as I can remember and there is a (c)1976 on the box.

====

You've actually got two K's there, and two F's, not one of each. All the more likely for making your inappropriate words. The newer version (see below) has still 2 F's, but only 1 K. And these three are all on the same cube, making this particular word impossible.

Psymann 13:35, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

====

I recently played a game with friends on their set (a pretty recent UK version with a blue box). I was amazed how easy I was finding it to get words. So I went and compared it to my old version (c1986, yellow box, sold in the UK). They've very different indeed.

New Version | Old Version
   AAEEGN   |   AACIOT
   ELRTTY   |   AHMORS
   AOOTTW   |   EGKLUY
   ABBJOO   |   ABILTY
   EHRTVW   |   ACDEMP
   CIMOTU*  |   EGINTV
   DISTTY   |   GILRUW
   EIOSST   |   ELPSTU
   DELRVY   |   DENOSW
   ACHOPS   |   ACELRS
   HIMNQU   |   ABJMOQ
   EEINSU   |   EEFHIY
   EEGHNW   |   EHINPS
   AFFKPS   |   DKNOTU
   HLNNRZ   |   ADENVZ
   DEILRX   |   BIFORX

[* See note below regarding correction. -Dfred, 2009-02-03]

Distribution:
A: vi       |   viii   |   -2
B: ii       |   iii    |   -1
C: ii       |   iii    |   -1
D: iii      |   iiii   |   -1
E: xi       |   x      |   +1
F: ii       |   ii     |   .
G: ii       |   iii    |   -1
H: v        |   iii    |   +2
I: vi       |   vii    |   -1
J: i        |   i      |   .
K: i        |   ii     |   -1
L: iiii     |   v      |   -1
M: ii       |   iii    |   -1
N: vi       |   v      |   +1
O: vii      |   vi     |   +1
P: ii       |   iii    |   -1
Q: i        |   i      |   .
R: v        |   iiii   |   +1
S: vi       |   v      |   +1
T: viiii    |   v      |   +4
U: iii      |   iiii   |   -1
V: ii       |   ii     |   .
W: iii      |   ii     |   +1
X: i        |   i      |   .
Y: iii      |   iii    |   .
Z: i        |   i      |   .

As you can see, the new version has removed many of the more awkward B, C, D, G, K, L, M and P which don't tend to help form long words, and have added more H, N, R, S, T and W, which tend to form longer words. It's also amended the vowels, taking a less helpful A and I to become a more useful E and O.

The new version is so easy that my friends had long-ago decided not to allow three-letter words at all - and even with this rule, in the few games I played, the new game with words of four letters and above was easier than the old one with three letters and above...

Psymann 13:32, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Correction to "new version" dice above

I've been working on some improvements to the boggle game included in the free bsdgames collection. One addition is an option to use the new dice patterns. For convenience I just pasted the values given above, however when later verifying those values against actual dice I found a discrepancy: CIMOTU versus CIMOTV, as it originally appeared above. All the other values matched. So there was either a transcription error or the dice are different in my 2009 US-purchased version and a UK-purchased version from mid-2007. Given the visual similarity of U/V and lack of other changes I'm thinking error. I changed it above... --Dfred (talk) 18:14, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Entirely probable it's an error on my part when I copied the letters. It's not a copy I own myself, so I can't check easily. Given I wrote it in a hurry in a friend's kitchen on the back on an envelope at midnight, it's entirely possible that I misread a U as a V when copying it up on the computer the following day. Psymann (talk) 23:20, 30 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Boggle Challenge Cube

To answer the question about the extra cube in the Challenge Cube set, yes, the set was originally sold with the 16 traditional cubes plus the red challenge cube. I believe this was so the players could opt to play with either the standard rules or by the "challenge" rules with a single set.

Television show

This entry is currently part of the Word Game TV Shows category. I can't find any evidence that there was ever a Boggle TV show - can someone cite a reference?

Longest game ever trivia

I just removed this bullet point from the trivia section:

*The longest series of straight Boggle games ever recorded occured in Bundaberg, Queensland, Australia on the 24rd of September 2006 at the Argyle Gardens Retirement Village. The competition was between three of the retirees; Floss, Pearl and Ian who played a total of 107 games over a period of 18.5 hours. The long duration of the tournament was the result of adding an unorthodox rule whereby play must continue until the first player wins a number of games that is equal to their age. Pearl was the eventual winner with an impressive 65 wins followed by Floss with 47 and Ian with 42. Floss had the longest word unsurpassable which ironically describes the marathon event quite accurately. After the game Ian remarked "because I'm the eldest by five years, I was bound to lose".^{[citation needed]}

I'd originally added the citation needed tag but decided the whole paragraph should be excised, mostly because the scores don't add up (107 games = 65 + 47 + 42 wins?), which casts some doubt on the already dubious claim. If someone can come up with a reliable source for this, please feel free to add it back into the article. Schi 23:19, 6 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Boggle Master cubes

I've typed in the letters on the cubes of my Boggle Master set for someone, so I thought, why not post here as well. The set has an English and a French manual. Here are the cubes.

   AAAFRS
   AAEEEE
   AAFIRS
   ADENNN
   AEEEEM
   AEEGMU
   AEGMNN
   AFIRSY
   BJKQXZ
   CCNSTW
   CEIILT
   CEILPT
   CEIPST
   DDLNOR
   DHHLOR
   DHHNOT
   DHLNOR
   EIIITT
   EMOTTT
   ENSSSU
   FIPRSY
   GORRVW
   HIPRRY
   NOOTUW
   OOOTTU

– b_jonas 20:08, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Big Boggle (1979)

In attempting to verify the above dice against my Big Boggle set from 1979 I found the following four differences:

Above   -->  My 1979 set
-----------------------------
CCNSTW  -->  CCENST
DDLNOR  -->  DHLNOR   (note same as #17 above)
DHHNOT  -->  DDHNOT
HIPRRY  -->  IPRRRY

These differences result in the following cube patterns in my 1979 Big Boggle set:

01 AAAFRS
02 AAEEEE
03 AAFIRS
04 ADENNN
05 AEEEEM
06 AEEGMU
07 AEGMNN
08 AFIRSY
09 BJKQXZ
10 CCENST
11 CEIILT
12 CEILPT
13 CEIPST
14 DDHNOT
15 DHHLOR
16 DHLNOR
17 DHLNOR
18 EIIITT
19 EMOTTT
20 ENSSSU
21 FIPRSY
22 GORRVW
23 IPRRRY
24 NOOTUW
25 OOOTTU

As noted above, dice 16 & 17 (DHLNOR) are duplicates. I bought this set used, but it is otherwise complete and in good shape. I have very carefully verified the above values as correctly representing my set... It would be interesting to know whether:

The duplicated DHLNOR dice are present in other 1979 Big Boggle sets?
The dice differences are real changes between Big Boggle and Boggle Master, or errors in copying the dice down from Boggle Master?

--Dfred (talk) 22:46, 16 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A little additional research has answered these questions. Found this 2004 posting to the wordgame-programmers@yahoogroups list which confirms both b_jonas's info for Boggle Master as well as mine for Big Boggle. And apparently 5x5 Boggle Deluxe has yet another cube set. --Dfred (talk) 00:00, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Parker box designer having a laugh

I have a set of Boggle bought in the UK branded Parker.

The dice layout shown in the product photo on the outside of the box has the word ARSE clearly visible!

In the photo, the dice are layed out like this:

S I . .
P . E E
U S A N
S R I B

The dots indicate positions where dice are either absent or not landed to the point of non-ambiguity. All letters are the right way up apart from the U which is rotated a quarter of a turn anti-clockwise.

Starting from the dice showing A, we need only go SW, N, NE to spell "ARSE".

Now surely this is the sort of thing that the designer would check for. I can only imagine that the designer did it deliberately as a joke.

Should we re-introduce a trivia section and mention this?

Duckbill (talk) 07:49, 29 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I jest not. Someone else has one as well and has uploaded a photo: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/43873. I was wondering if the joke might have been spotted and the box changed, making the joke boxes into valuable collectors' items. Duckbill (talk) 07:57, 29 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Making words out of a Set of letters

My son has a project due Friday and he has to make every possible word out of these letters AEEIOBELNRT could someone get back to me on a program perhaps iI can get from the internet to make this possible.

                             Sincerely,

                         JennyMay Murrin

PS E-Mail is fluffywolftail@yahoo.com —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.230.73.84 (talk) 20:55, 16 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This Talk page is for discussion of how to improve the article. That is how Wikipedia works. If you want help to help your son cheat on his homework, find a forum for asking questions. They do exist. David Spector (talk) 00:34, 19 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

link to "Fun and Games with the English Language"

Following up on a suggestion from McGeddon, I would like to propose that one or both of the following be added as external links:

(1) "Fun and Games with the English Language", URL= http://phillipmfeldman.org/English/index.html

(2) the Boggle-specific portion of the above page, URL= http://phillipmfeldman.org/English/index.html#Boggle

Note that there is not much material on Wikipedia on the subject of solving word puzzles algorithmically. It is my understanding that Wikipedia does not allow the submission of original work, so I cannot directly post my content on Wikipedia, but it should be possible to post external links to my material. Please consider this.

Phillip Dr. Phillip M. Feldman (talk) 05:01, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If there are concerns about this request, please let me know what they are and I'll do my best to address them.

Phillip Dr. Phillip M. Feldman (talk) 03:55, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Correct spelling of inventor's first name

It's "Allan," not "Alan." I should know, I'm his son. A quick google search is not a good authority - there are too many misspellings. Here's a link to a newspaper article from Boggle's early days:

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1368&dat=19781209&id=sYRQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=-RIEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5118,2546867

Let me know if you need further proof.

(sorry if I didn't follow proper Wikipedia rules - I just registered to fix this one issue) [-- Unsigned comment by User:Aturoff]

Hello Aturoff... You did the correct thing, especially providing the corroborating information. I was able to find the same spelling in several other articles related to the wedding at F.A.O. Schwarz. I have added the Milwaukee Sentinel article as a reference to the article.

Do note that there are some guidelines about conflicts of interest in editing Wiki articles, but help correcting biographical information is always appreciated. Thanks! --Dfred (talk) 23:41, 6 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your help Dfred. I'm new here - still trying to figure things out.--Aturoff (talk) 00:17, 7 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

External Links

Are any of those appropriate? Beach drifter (talk) 02:37, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 2 external links on Boggle. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add {{cbignore}} after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add {{nobots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}} to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers. —^{cyberbot II}_{Talk to my owner:Online} 04:39, 29 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Boggle. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

Added {{dead link}} tag to http://www.uga.berkeley.edu/osl/osl.asp
Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130128133526/http://www.grinnell.edu/student/groups to http://www.grinnell.edu/student/groups/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 23:27, 22 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Woke change

For some reason, and I doubt it’s a good one, the game no longer recognizes the word “rape” or any of its variants! Seriously!!! Is this a cultural statement!?!? It’s a word, not a threat! 47.203.194.162 (talk) 14:05, 18 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Silliness

Why does the game not recognize the word “rape” ? Do they really think they will improve our culture by pretending it doesn’t exist?? Woke gone too far…again! 47.203.194.162 (talk) 14:07, 18 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Letters on each cube?

I didn't see a list of the letters on each cube. Is this considered proprietary information, protected by law? If not, can someone add it please? David Spector (talk) 00:31, 19 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]