Boggle: Instructions

Boggle is played with a tray of 16 letter dice, which is shaken to get 16 random letters. In Interactive Boggle™, the computer randomly generates this grid for you.

Players have three minutes (shown by the countdown timer) to find as many words as they can in the grid, according to the following rules:

• The letters must be adjoining in a 'chain'. (Letter cubes in the chain may be adjacent horizontally, vertically, or diagonally.)
• Words must contain at least three letters.
• No letter cube may be used more than once within a single word.

Type your words into the box below the grid. You can put each word on a new line or separate the words with spaces or commas. It does not matter whether you use upper or lower case letters.

When the time is up, your words will be submitted automatically and your score calculated. If your score is sufficiently high, your name will enter today's Hall of Fame! (If you want to submit your words before the time is up, press the 'Submit Early' button.)

Click here to start playing Boggle

Strategy Hints & Scoring

The scoring is as follows:

• Fewer than 3 Letters: no score
• 3 Letters: 1 point
• 4 Letters: 1 point
• 5 Letters: 2 points
• 6 Letters: 3 points
• 7 Letters: 4 points
• 8 or More Letters: 11 points

Note: Although the 'Qu' cube occupies a single space in the grid, it counts as two letters for the purpose of scoring.

Full credit is awarded for both the singular and plural forms of a noun provided you list them as separate words, so cat and cats each score a point. The same is true for all other derived forms (e.g. chew, chews, chewed, etc.).

If a word appears more than once in the grid, it may not be counted twice. Also, multiple meanings of the same word do not earn multiple credit.

Any dictionary word is allowed. As in most word games, you will not receive credit for proper names, abbreviations, contractions, hyphenated words, or foreign words that are not in an English dictionary. You will be penalised 1 point for each guess you make that is not recognised as a valid word.

Words within other words are permissible. This can be a valuable fact to remember, for if you spot the word part, you can also write down par and art. In this case, it is also a word in reverse: trap.

You will not be penalised for submitting the same word twice, but doing so will not increase your score. This may be helpful if you do not remember if you have already found a particular word; it is probably faster to type it again than to check your list.

A good knowledge of anagrams will help. If you notice the letters S, T, O, and P arranged in a 2x2 square, you will be able to write not only stop but also opts, tops, spot, post, and pots, scoring a total of 6 points.

Click here to start playing Boggle

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