I just remembered Guest’s idea of taking the top 20 scoring words to level the playing field. I do think that would be interesting. Alice put a pin in that for later…

I always start on the lower left on the board. Its a bad habit but it's where I always look. then go high value letters. Qu certainly but c and w make a lot of great words. I avoid ing unless the strings are obvious. Seem to spend too much time on it when I try to use ing. My Achilles heel is double letters. Oo doesn't compute in my brain. I play to keep my mind active and learn new words. Also, there is a really good group of people here from all over. That is a real plus. I need to invite my brother. He's a genius at letter games. Thanks for the interesting posts here.

Big word frequency--

If Alice makes the boards manually rather than purely random generation, I would not be surprised if they tend to be built around a handful of big extra-fun words that were placed as the original letters and then 'filler' letters added around them... gotta make sure all the Boggle animals have enough enrichment in their enclosure after all. :)

@silv alphabet soup huh? That must be what Alien was talking about before.

Perhaps… perhaps not, but I’ll never tell. It seems like I made a bit of a splash when I entered, so I’ll keep my heroic origins a partial mystery for people to figure out *wink

I find it fascinating hearing about the people who search for the unicorn first. Here’s a little teaser to the 2kkei prequel movie. I had the eyes of the unicorn beat out of me when I was playing bananagramz with my friends. They used two and three letter words all over the place while I tried to make some interesting words like phantasmagorical. While they certainly weren’t word nerds, their close games with me using their limited vocabulary taught me a valuable lesson about practicality. But this isn’t bananagramz and I’m not the same person I used to be. I may want to reinvest in building up my more niche vocabulary of longer words thanks to you guys.

Other than using suffixes and prefixes, do you find any long words seem to come up an unreasonably high number of times? Ever since I saw Norm’s quodlibet high scoring word, I’ve found that same word at least twice on the same day that I learned about it, maybe more, which seems unreasonably high

I am just now realizing that there can be a slight delay when scrolling before a word is recorded. I have noticed when I repeat a word to add an -s or suffix, and am surprised that the word wasn’t recorded, so I have to hold for a bit. Does anyone else notice this?

Also, an art tablet on laptop is an excellent idea. I wonder if my old bamboo tablet would work on my newish Mac book. I will have to try it…

I think I incorporate a lot of the strategies discussed without having ever thought about it. But my focus is on finding the longest words possible. I often find my best words right at the beginning (so I'm fairly good with Unicorn). I constantly scan the board for the "bigger picture" while bagging shorter words as filler.

After the game I always look at the word list to try to expand my vocabulary, take note of the best words and try to trace them on the board. I can't find words I don't know, although sometimes I find them by accident, like when I miss-swipe a word. These are my two challenges with Boojum specifically--there are so many words I don't know, and I struggle with miss-swiping. They did adjust the board for me before, and it has improved some, but it still is not as good as the board on Boggle Live, in my opinion. It easily catches the wrong letter when swiping and it slows me own considerably because sometimes I have to try a word two or three times.

I use a mouse pad on a laptop and I think there is a limit to your speed with that setup. That is why I strategize by looking for longer words to rack up points. I'll never attain to the speed I had back in Boggle with Friends days with a smart phone. My average score back then was 1300-1500. Though I don't know how that score correlates to the scoring system on this site.

My Achilles heel right from the start was speed. I use my laptop and its mouse pad. I'm pretty fast if it comes to doing my daily work by using the mouse pad. At work I use nine up to eight different applications which I have to switch constantly for different requirements. So the company equipped us with a large (!) screen and a mouse is standard. After a surgery a few months ago I couldn't sit at my desk and had to learn how to work out of my bed on an 15-inch laptop. What can I say? It works! Forget my pretty desk, I love my bed!!!

Tough, if I play Boojum, I often miss letters from the row of letters I have to follow to create a word, have to correct my path and lose time. If I am really fast, it happens that the zoom changes. I suspect that I accidentally touch the area of the “right-tap-function” on my mouse pad. This is annoying because it forces me to correct the zoom instead of swiping and looking out for words. The solution is obvious, I think. As soon as I have some money left, I'm going to invest in a tablet with a pen.

I don't like playing games on my cellphone because everything is so tiny and my index finger blocks my view of the screen. Apart from that, I never managed to write with my thumbs. So I hold the phone with one hand and use the other to swipe with my index finger. One of my friends always makes fun of me and says I look like ET:-)

When a new Boojum board appears, I usually instantly see one or two longer words jumping at me. If not, I check the board vertically and horizontally. If I see a word, I look to see if there is an “s”, “ed”, “ing”... I am focused on initials too. On some boards you can find e.g. “-end” which is surrounded by s, p, t, m etc. Love these boards.

When I started playing Boojum I was focused on my “regular” words, which were mostly 3- or 4-letters words.

Now I am in a transition phase. I sometimes take my time to search for longer words, including compounds, which goes at the cost of the amount of my words but I definitely have to get out of my comfort zone.

Games with more that 90 seconds runtime are my favorite. They allow me to compete more with other players and the difference in the amount of words or points I reach in these games speak for themselves.

I must confess, that I gave up learning all the words that appear on daily Boojum boards.1.I couldn't manage. 2. Some of them are so exotic, that even you guys don't know them.

My aspirational target was never to know all the 20.000 up to 50.000 words, that the average English speaker uses in daily life. I can understand 90% of the colloquial language. That's fine with me.

As a non native English speaker I can not confirm getting in a flow when playing English word games. But I know this state from solving German cross word puzzles. Writing down a word I found without even thinking about it and at the same time looking out for three new words.

And I can confirm this state when I talk to people in English. It's like a break-even-point when you now longer consciously and constantly have to search for words in your head but just can speak. Not perfect but good enough to do your job properly or have some nice chats with friends.

I can't tell you, how much I love it, that our shared passion for word games almost forces me to write long texts in English...:-)

Your strategy/method looks a lot like mine 2k (you're just... better, lol. Do you have any comment on the rumor that your boggle powers stem from falling into a vat of radioactive alphabet soup?)

As physical input goes, I already have the "don't look at hands" bit down-- I use a screenless art tablet and a laptop, so I'm using my tablet pen to swipe while looking only at an unobstructed screen. My limiting factor is almost always finding things and not input speed. If I'm on a roll with word groups, I can kinda do the thing mentioned where I'm finding new words while simultaneously 'catching up' on inputting different ones I've already found.

• I first skim very quickly for the higher-scoring letters (W, V, K, Y, etc.; obviously Q/J/Z/X as well, but you can sometimes get a far higher volume of almost-as-good words if you can start banging out word groups with the second-highest value letters). Also bonus tiles if applicable. Ws and Vs seem particularly likely to make a lot of high-value words.
• Sometimes I remember to glance at the word count at the start too--helps to know if I'm looking for a high volume of long words... particularly -ING, -IER, -IEST, -ER, -NESS, etc. tend to be in play if there are many long words and finding that pattern will net you a bunch of them at once.
• Clusters and suffixes/prefixes are ideal for those high-point letters (CH-, -CK, WR-, -IZE, -AKE, etc.). I'm also trying to combine that with any other 'building blocks' I can grab to make longer/compound words (e.g. -ATION, -MAN, -MEN, PRE-, UN-, NON-, PRO-, -ING, -IER, -ER, -EST, -LIKE). Naturally, I also grab the plural of every word if possible.
• Word groups are definitely key. If I get a long word or good letter cluster I want all the possible rhymes, parts, and anagrams I can get.
• I will also grab clusters like STR-, TH, -ASH, double vowel, double consonant, etc. but they're usually not as high priority as the bigger-point ones.
• For Q/Z/J/X, I've roughly memorized most of the possibilities and make sure to grab as many as I can remember. Unless you're *really* zipping on the other words, it's hard to make up for points lost by missing too many of these. I tend to miss EX- words though.
• Spamming 4-letter words with just one decent letter in them is valid filler for time where you've gotten almost all the big words or you can't seem to find them. If it's 1-2 big words left that you're not finding, it's probably not worth it to keep looking for those unless you have tons of time.

The timer length makes a massive difference in what kind of game I'm playing. No time to be methodical on a short timer, mostly just machine-gun as many things as possible while roughly following the main search strategy. Letting any dead time go where I'm not inputting words, even small ones, is likely not worth a tradeoff. For longer games I have to keep better track of systematically exhausting the best possible words, and making sure I get most of the biggest ones is typically worth it even if I have to slow down and guess it out.

I think my overall performance is less consistent than some of the other players here--I have my strategies, but regardless my ADHD-riddled biosoftware sometimes locks in to deliver me a super high score, and sometimes it just can't click with a particular board well at all.

This is a fascinating thread, it has made me really think about how I play boggle and I thank you so much for this 2k.

I started being more mindful about next two or three moves and was able to improve my total percentage of words with that tip. It’s funny how we have our little “go to words,” like Alien hates J’s but taj, raj, raja, rajas, haj, hajes, tajes, djin, djinn, djins, djinns, is a common thread for me, but maybe a waste of time depending, And Limes has hers, and I have to say, she could be dragged through town by a team of horses and still easily slay me, She is lightening, even though none of her letters aren’t especially high scoring.

You are lightening and analytical, very interesting… I won’t name everyone who can easily kick my “arse” you know who you are…most of you…

I like the Norm-Alien-Boog-Coop-Stevie-Cat-Sys strategy of focusing on points too. I know I can get better, but have to be honest, not sure if I am up to memorizing all Welsh words and archaic terms, I will try to see if it fits in my google calendar…

I have two modes: competitive and half asleep/zen mode which I am usually in, but no harm in upping my game, thank you!

I typically, get the unicorn first, it just sings to me and then I am happy and do crappy words the rest of the time. I once had a brilliant friend in high school who aced his SAT’s (1600) but could not beat me at boggle. He did a test of my visual memory by switching tiles a few times. I got them everytime. The visual memory of you peeps is very good!! I still suck at Unicorn however—weird.

That was years ago before other stuff happened, and I got older and slower for sure, but also learned so many more words.. Like Alien, I am swiping and obscuring the board, it may be a disadvantage for some, I am not the most amazing chess player, and thinking ahead two or three moves for me is pretty good. I stop there.

Scrabble words that I memorize are longer, so there are fewer, but I do believe the timeless board is improving my skill in the “never gonna use in real life” small word game. But I am forever in love with boggle as it maybe the first thing I was exceptional at in my family (not here) . Oh, actually Scrabble was first, so annoyed my dad, although he helped me get good.❤️

I love that we share the same passion and I am truly grateful to Alice for creating a really spectacular game.

But anyways, I go high score over speed, work less for more is the fantasy after all, however a cat jumps on my lap, the phone rings, or I am tired, so my game gets sabotaged….

I almost always start in the top left corner, I only realised this a few months ago. Unless a word is screaming out at me, that’s where I begin. 

The game is a bit of an OCD thing with me. I want to “clean” the board up. I need to get the words so they’re “clear”.

I usually notice if there’s a high scoring letter - I like Z and X, but struggle seeing the Q, it’s my blind spot, it’s a shame coz I know a lot of words using Q. 

I try to remember to see the bonus letters if I’m in the Boojum room, but I often forget them. 

I love words, so I regularly seek out new, strange ones.

I make lists of my favourites. 

Semordnilaps are good to know - a very good player taught me edile/elide (and, if there’s an A nearby, aedile). 

I’ll regularly look up words that contain J, X, Z, Q and try to learn what I can. 

Same with 3 letter words. I like the word pyx. Also cwm. 

These things obviously help with my game, though I don’t do it specifically to be better at Boggle (or Scrabble), I just enjoy it. I used to have dreams where letters were flying at my face. I think it helped my game. 

I’m getting better at noticing when there’s a long word but should probably look at the number of them in a board before I start. I never do. 

I often miss the ing.

I suppose these are things I need to work on - those and the Q’s.

Perhaps I ought to think more about my game, but generally I’m trying to think less - the voices in my head refuse to shut up, it’s like having a head full of argumentative cicadas. 

I’ll stop talking for now, coz I said a lot and I’m not sure if I answered much of what was asked. I want to ask lots of things…but I’ll leave it for tomorrow and the next day and the next day. 

My perfect game is me and 6 Norms (cloning obvs). 

That’s just a little joke (oh no it isn’t).

Generally when I play, I’m multitasking - lots going on around me.

I only really enjoy playing when I have no outside distraction or any expectation to talk or do anything. Then I can go into what I refer to as my “trance” and I unwind. Sometimes it’s like I’m inside the board. 

I play to relax, it’s about getting out of my head, switching off entirely. That’s when it’s perfect for me. 

I don’t think much when I play, it’s reflex. Sometimes I play by mistake when I don’t mean to (like when I’m taking a break).

It surprised me (from previous conversations I’ve had about this sort of thing) to hear that some people think a lot about what they’re doing in-game. I’m always really interested to see other people play or hear about their habits/methods.

I’m constantly swiping, I never stop, even when I know it’s a dud word, I suppose that’s my way of thinking…without really thinking.

Wowsa Alice, I was thinking that would be so cool, but too difficult to pull off. Very impressive….

I think scrabble is more accessible. You have 7 tiles and have to make a word with them. Anyone can play it, even if they are bad at it. Boggle has 16 letters and you have to be able to go backwards and forwards and do it quickly. Scrabble is also a slow game, so people can play it whilst chatting and other stuff. Which makes it all the more baffling that people on ISC are obsessed with 5 minute games. They should really play boggle instead.

Also, Scrabble has just been around much longer. Why are Monopoly and Cluedo so popular? They are some of the worst board games ever invented. But anyone can play them, including kids. And they have just been around for a long time.

I have plans to include a version of Scrabble on the site, but it will be a big project and likely be some months before it is realised. It will also involve adjusting the letter scoring (for copyright reasons).

I’m glad to hear that my points were fascinating! I have a few other ideas that I’d love to explore with you guys, so expect a few more forum posts from me in the future. Some of these tips are new for me, or they are subconscious thoughts that I never thought too deeply on. Hopefully that allows me to apply them more intentionally such as Alien’s usage of suffixes.

Lime, I used to double thumb on Boggle with Friends since I think that platform was more made for it. I couldn’t double thumb for speed, but I used it more to remember and plan out where my next word would be. I also do play reflexively, but my best games are when I play thoughtfully while letting my reflexes take over as much of the potential mental burden of playing as possible. This is part of why I do tend to play better when I have people around to challenge me. So when I tell people I’m “stepping up my game,” I really am putting more thought into my play.

The other questions that I hope to ask in the future are as follows:

1. why is scrabble more popular as a word game than boggle? Where does boggle outperform scrabble as a word game and can we lean into that to create a more popular variant of boggle?
2. what are some useful fields or subjects for expanding your boggle vocabulary?
3. other than boggle, what other word games do you guys like?

You make some very interesting points.

My ideal game of boggle is untimed because I haven't yet developed a rapid swipe. I also look at the letters when I swipe - after years of using a PC or Mac with a keyboard and a mouse, I expect typos and so I instinctively constantly invigilate what I am doing. 

An annoying foible is that once I've found a chain of related words, I find it hard to let go and move on to discover a different one.

I've never broken the game down so scientifically, that's fascinating 2k. I think a lot of my thought process is looking for letter combinations that occur in a lot of words or produce long words, like -ing or -ness. Even small combos like -ck or -st can free your attention up a little because you don't have to focus so much on seeking out each complete word.

My favorite games are the ones when I identify large letter groups and can swipe through them with as little "thought per word" as possible.

If I were to give any advice it might be to not get stuck on one letter or combination. There are so many games I've focused on a high scoring letter and burned more time than the extra points were worth.

I shall come back to this several dozen times later on, when I can focus a little better, because I’m interested in several things mentioned here.

“Search for easy three-four letter words to busy your hands if you burn through your word groups”

I’ve said this several times to a certain person who may or may not be in this thread right now…I think his word count has gone up and I’m taking full credit for it.

I’m interested to know, 2k - does this mean you are constantly thinking when you’re playing, or is it more learned reflex?

What about the rest of you reading this, do you think a lot when you play?

Also, do you double thumb 2k?

Interestingly, I am trying to transition from typing to swiping. Your point about not looking at your hand is an issue for me. When I type, I am looking at the board, not my hands. When I swipe, I am looking a my finger, and I tend to miss the longer words because I am not seeing the whole board. This is something I will have to work on, but will come with practise I guess.

With the high scoring letters, learning specific patterns is very important.

• If there is an x, then it usually makes sense to start looking for words that start with EX, as they can be long ones. You have the usual patterns of axes, taxes, relax, fax.
• Q is usually the first letter of a word, so those are easier and you can cover most of them. But there are also SQ words, of which there are a lot, and EQ words. Then roque, toque, roquet, toquet, coquet. Opaque comes up a lot, but that can be tricky to spot.
• When it comes to finding long words, I automatically zone in on the suffixes, -ing, -iest, ier, -tion are the main ones.
• J is rarely very useful, unless yout get a board with JECT on it.
• Z is the toughest, because that can come pretty much anywhere in a word, but if you have a ZE, then you look for words ending with those letters.

I naturally tend to focus on finding longer words over speed, so the speed part is the part I really need to work on.

It would be interesting to hear from people who are speed players, like Sister, and how they think.

I have never shared these thoughts before, so I anticipate that much of this is already rather intuitive for this audience. But this can still open the doorway to talk about how to take these concepts even deeper in the future

For me, the closest that I get to a perfect game of boggle is when I manage to maximize the amount of time that I spend searching for words. There are 3 things that enter my mind when I'm playing.

1. Searching for a new word to swipe
2. Executing the swipe
3. Strategizing the letters that I focus on, such as honing in on "z" words

Don't look at the hands. Look at the board

I have found ways to outsource #2 so that I can focus on finding new words. My best games are when I switch from swiping words consciously to swiping words reflexively. Practically speaking, this can be achieved by taking your eyes off of where your hands are and looking at other parts of the board while your hands do the rest. It's a relatively common reflex that we do such as when a pianist continues playing music with one hand while flipping to the next page of their songbook with the other.

Assuming you can swipe words without looking at them, then you can reallocate the precious seconds that you spend on #2 to bolster #1. I believe this can be optimized to be more than just looking ahead for your next word. If, for example, you look for new words while your hands work on a related group of words, you can theoretically minimize the number of times that you need to focus on #2. For example, the word "Cartel" can grant you a number of words to work on. Assuming that you start on the "c" to have a stable reference point, that at minimum gives you car, cart, carte, and cartel, but possibly more such as cat, cate, and cater. At its most optimized, you might only need to look at "Cartel" once before you search for other word groups. Mastering this skill could save you a conservative 3-6 glances at your hands that can instead be used to find a whole 3-6 new words.

This skill can be taken to heights that I personally haven't reached. The most optimized version of this skill may very well be that one requires no expended mental thought in order to type in a word. Whether it is swipe or type, I think we all exert a certain amount of focus to make sure that we have no typos on our keyboard-users or that our thumbs are in the right place for swipe-users. Think carefully about this because you may be focusing more than you think on the active process of inputting a word.

My "perfect" game

My thoughts on what goes into a perfect boggle player go beyond the scope of this single post, though future discussion may grant me an opportunity to share my thoughts. The closest that I get to entering my flow state and performing my "perfect" game of boggle is when my vocabulary (specifically of groups of words) is large enough that I can gain statistically significant amounts of time from automatically inputting entire word groups. My mind isn't always prepared to perform asynchronous tasks, so I also have to remind myself to intentionally absorb the board in chunks as opposed to individual letters. But, my perfect games of boggle are reliant on me competently executing these concepts. To give a more grounded idea of what goes on in my head during this perfect game, it goes as follows:

1. Successfully search for root words that lead to word groups
2. Start swiping through word groups
3. Fit in as many tasks as possible while swiping
4. Search for words with high scoring letters
5. Search for new word groups
6. Search for easy three-four letter words to busy your hands if you burn through your word groups
7. Maintain a running log of all the words that you've executed and all the words that you can still use
8. When the word groups run out, move on to easy three-four letter words so that at all points of the round, you are still swiping words
9. Re-evaluate the board to check if you missed any corners of the board that contribute letters for new word groups or high scoring words
10. Search for prefixes to combine with your previous root words
11. If all else fails, start manually guessing words letter by letter.

Areas for improvement

I have lacked an active boggle community previously, so this is the perfect time to see if other members can help build up other ideas. Other than improving the straightforward categories of vocabulary, word groups, and general fluidity of motion in the game, I can think of a few other places within the process that I've outlined previously

1. What are the first letters that you want to start guessing on? Letters like x are high scoring, but very few words start with them.
2. What fields of study lend to certain pairings of words? This may help turn disadvantageous boards with unconventional words into something more manageable. For example, Welsh has a few words in the scrabble dictionary that use w as a vowel. Crwth and cwm are both Welsh words
3. With the time save that one gets by minimizing glancing at their hands, are there other tasks, besides hunting for words, that you should use that time save focusing on?
4. What is an appropriate order of skill progression that a new player can use to improve. Everyone has their process, but resources and guides still provide a gentle entry into a game where there are large skill gaps among players