This is a fun game, although it seems fewer and fewer people are interested in games that require them to be able to spell. Fortunately, it's also possible to play as solitaire. The original version uses a 4x4 grid of letters; various 5x5 versions exist (such as Boggle Deluxe, a.k.a. Big Boggle or Boggle Master), but these are all out of print at this time (2002-04-16).

Tactics

  • Look for "S"s and "E"s: Plurals are the easiest way to make longer words. Knowing where the "S"s are can help this quite a bit. "E"s are almost always useful, especially if they have any "S"s, "D"s, "I"s, or "R"s around them.
  • Look at what you write down: Some words make other words when spelled backwards: sag and gas, tang and gnat. Looking at them after you write them down might be easier than trying to find them on the grid. Check for substrings as well: there, here, her, ere, the.
  • Look for rhymes and common endings: If you find hold, there might also be bold, cold, told, fold, sold, etc. Don't forget that old is a word on its own, as well!
  • Some words start with vowels: It's very easy to forget this, and never even bother looking for them.
  • Find common triples: Some letters create lots of words, especially when they are in a triangle (or "L") configuration. Consider A-R-T (rat, tar, art) and A-E-T (ate, eat, tea).
  • Memorize lots of three-letter words: While they don't score many points, they are by far the most common -- and, if you don't record them, someone else might. Some good obscure ones are: tam, qua, roc, tor, mar, lei.
  • "Proper" nouns that are also common: Quite a few proper names have alternate meanings that allow them to be used: tommy, josh, ken, tony, sherry, curt.

House Rules

  • Alternate scoring method: This one is even easier to remember than the basic rules above. Each word is worth 2 less than its length. So, a three-letter word is worth 1 point; a four-letter word is worth 2, etc. Relative to the basic scoring method, this tends to reward unique words a little more
  • Writing plurals: When you find a word and its plural, the basic rules indicated that you have to write them seperately. I've found that using a notation like "+s" is sufficient; it's more important (to me) that people spend their time finding the words, not recording them.
  • Word challenges: If a player can provide a meaningful definition of the word, we tend to let it slide. Marginal words are often permitted, often with some give and take: I'll give you kludge if you give me snarf. This sort of bargaining is most often necessary when people want to use slang words that are in common use in their group, but are fairly rare in the overall language. When a dictionary is required, I find that The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary is very handy. Their rules for acceptable words are very similar, and the paperback version is small enough to take with you almost anywhere.
  • Misdeal: If a majority (or quorum) of the players think that the shake of the dice is boring or untenable, then it's time to shake the grid up again. Usually this is invoked only in dire straits, most often caused by having an insufficient number of vowels on the board.

Examples


E T M L
A E S B
S C O N
T G S A

I found these words: cost, cog+s, ate, tea, eat+s, tee+s, see, sea+s, scat, cat+s, met, son, goes, sans, boa+s, bog+s, cob+s, con+s, snog, test, meat+s, sat, sate+s


A H H O
P E N S
K E J O
R S L S

I found: nee, seen, see, peen, pee, peer+s, peek+s, eek+s, seek, reek+s, ape, pea, heap, pen+s, hen+s, ken, keep, neap, josh, sheen, sheep, sneer+s, sheer, jeer+s, lee, son, shone, she, sole, lone, one+s, slosh, sleep, perk

Details

The 16 dice have the following 96 letters on their faces:

 1. A E A N E G      9. W N G E E H
 2. A H S P C O     10. L N H N R Z
 3. A S P F F K     11. T S T I Y D
 4. O B J O A B     12. O W T O A T
 5. I O T M U C     13. E R T T Y L
 6. R Y V D E L     14. T O E S S I
 7. L R E I X D     15. T E R W H V
 8. E I U N E S     16. N U I H M Qu

If you're curious, this gives the following distribution:

A-6    H-5    O-7    V-2
B-2    I-6    P-2    W-3
C-2    J-1    Qu-1   X-1
D-3    K-1    R-5    Y-3
E-11   L-4    S-6    Z-1
F-2    M-2    T-9
G-2    N-6    U-3

I always wondered if the dice were designed according to any particular criteria, or if they were mostly randomly assigned. The only obvious observation is that none of the unique letters (J, K, Qu, X, Z) are on the same die.

A rough measure of how popular each die is can be found by summing the frequency for each letter on each face. One quick perl program later, and we have (sorted from least to most popular):

    die       sum  mean  sdev
------------  ---  ----  ----
A S P F F K    19  3.17  2.23
N U I H M Qu   23  3.83  2.14
O B J O A B    25  4.17  2.79
L N H N R Z    27  4.50  1.87
A H S P C O    28  4.67  2.16
R Y V D E L    28  4.67  3.27
I O T M U C    29  4.83  2.93
L R E I X D    30  5.00  3.41
T E R W H V    35  5.83  3.49
T S T I Y D    36  6.00  2.68
W N G E E H    38  6.33  3.88
E R T T Y L    41  6.83  3.25
O W T O A T    41  6.83  2.23
A E A N E G    42  7.00  3.46
E I U N E S    43  7.17  3.19
T O E S S I    45  7.50  2.07

Unfortunately, that doesn't show any particular trends. (Although, as yesno points out, it does mean that one cannot spell "FUCK", as the two 'F's and one 'K' are all on the same die.)

For comparison, the 100 tiles in a Scrabble set are distributed like this:


  A-9    H-2    O-8    V-2
  B-2    I-9    P-2    W-2
  C-2    J-1    Q-1    X-1
  D-4    K-1    R-6    Y-2
  E-12   L-4    S-4    Z-1
  F-2    M-2    T-6    Blank-2
  G-3    N-6    U-4