Mike's Boggle Challenge

Think you're good at Boggle? I've never met anyone in person who can consistently beat me at Boggle. If you think you're up to the challenge, then please contact me so we can play - but I warn you that unless you are literally destroying normal people on a regular basis, then you will have no chance. When I play (which is rare) against people who are not members of my family, I usually play against everyone else in the game and win comfortably. Also, you can go to this site, and test your skills - I almost always finish in the top 20% on the 5x5 board. I'm not saying this to be arrogant or boastful, but rather to save you time.

Good Boggle Rule Changes

Since my family plays (used to play, really) a lot, my parents came up with a few good rules changes to make the game more enjoyable. I recommend them highly if you are playing regularly at all:
1) 4x4 games are played with a 4-letter word minimum, and 5x5 games are played with a 5-letter word minimum. If you get good enough, you end up scribbling frantically the whole time without this rule.
2) Scoring - the scoring system is kind of silly. Conceivably, two players could find the same 4 obscure 8-letter words and a third could find one short word and win, when clearly he did not do as well. Instead, try the following system: each word has a base value one greater than the previous length (e.g. 4-letter = 1, 5-letter = 2, 6-letter = 3...etc). When you read a word, you get that base value multiplied by the number of people who missed that particular word. This works well in 4-5 player games, but the numbers get kind of big in 6+ person games. Let's say I read the word "scarf" and one person got it with me and two missed it. Both people who got it would receive 4 points, and the people who missed it would get 0. Obviously, if everyone gets a word you cross it off.
3) This one I don't feel too strongly about - we disallow adding 's', 'es' or 'ies' to the end of words. This will also sometimes prevent frantic scribbling, since 's' is a very common letter and nearly every noun and verb have a plural form. I still find the game to be enjoyable without this rule, although you do sometimes lose the ability to look for longer words amidst scribbling down 5-letter words ending in 's'.

Take me:
Back to Mike's Home Page
Back to Mike's Leisure Activities Page