Customer Reviews

Boggle

5 star:		(65)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I do not play board games, plain and simple. Boggle is the exception. I got hooked on it about 18 months ago. It is the most addictive game I've ever played. Its appeal crosses generations -- my 76-year-old father is its most ardent enthusiast. I like it because it keeps his mind sharp.

My wife and I compete fiercely. We slightly modify the rules. For example,we allow two turns of the timer per board, allowing us more time to develop words. We say that the game is over after three boards; then we start a new game. This keeps it interesting if someone falls decisively behind. We also give two bonus points (13 in total) if someone develops a nine-letter word. (Play the game, see how difficult THAT is, then you'll see why we think it deserves a bonus.)

I am fortunate to have found a VERY old Big Boggle game in my mother's basement. This game is good, but the BEST game is Master Boggle. I cannot find it anywhere, but my father has it. The mix of letters allows you to develop really cool, exotic words. Last week, I spelled "gestalt."

Boggle is a great word game that is fun for the whole family in which players have three minutes to find as many connected words as they can in a 4x4 grid. It doesn't take long to play (only three minutes to be exact) and you don't need a lot of space to play it. It uses a lot of the same skills as scrabble, but unlike in scrabble you won't keep getting beaten every time by that brainy uncle who must have memorized the dictionary, because most of the words that can be found are only 3 or 4 letters long, and even younger kids have a fair chance to win(occasionally a very long word can be found however - my personal triumph was the 8-letter "nicotine"). Also, you WILL learn new words you never knew existed from this game when people guess them and make you look them up - crazy words like "hie" and "tat" and "coe". Overall a very fun game well worth buying, although I wish they still made the bigger version, because that one's a lot of fun too.

Boggle is a fantastic game. It is most enjoyable and challenging when you play with others who are your intellectual peers. I love playing this with my brother (a lawyer), my dad (a geologist), my mom (who knows everything), and various and sundry other people. Turn the timer over and watch the pencils burn up the paper! Remember, you earn points only for words 3 letters long or longer, AND for words that no one else comes up with. A challenge? You bet!

You can make all kinds of words from letter cubes that are adjacent to each other. It's also a great way to learn new words (mostly out of desperation). Be sure to keep a dictionary handy to check one another's word efforts. How about these that I picked up by playing the game: scree, scurf, jape, berm, and many more.

This is a great game for small get-togethers. The game can last one round or many, depending on the group.

This is also a fun game for children as well as adults. When children and adults both play, you can simply score adults vs adults and children vs children. Fun for everyone.

5 star game all the way! Affordable, durable, and endlessly fun!

Alan Holyoak

"Baby Boggle," as my family calls it, is fun and somewhat challenging. It's difficult to play, though, after having played "Big Boggle," which is like "Baby Boggle," except it is 5 x 5 letters instead of 4 x 4. You get it? It seems like a child's game. It is less exciting, less challenging, less of a mental exercise and probably less educational. One can only guess at why Parker Brothers replaced the adult game with this puny version. Are we Americans just not up to 5 letter + words? At least they could have given us a choice. I've been searching and bidding on Big Boggle games for a year now. They sell on-line for up to $50.00 because of their rarity. Why? Why? Why? Eventually I'll probably have to fork over the big bucks to get the big game. In the meantime, there is always (sigh) "Baby Boggle."...END

Our family consists of 1 14 year old honor student, 1 17 year old honor student, 1 third grade teacher, 1 manuscript editor with a degree in English, and 1 attorney with an undergraduate minor in English. Our games are as close to "full contact sport" as you can get without blood on the furniture. We all love the game. Be assured that the teen-agers hold their own. We have been having these games for about 6 years, but that may end because the kids are getting too smart for us. Boggle is one of the best family and youth games I have encountered.

I have played this game for years. It is a lot of fun but my friends got tired of it. I love the fast passed action, which to me is less boring than scrabble, but not everyone thinks so. If you like scrabble you should enjoy this game. Finding with whom to play is a different story. If you are a parent do not hesitate to purchase this game for your child. I recommend having a scrabble dictionary close by. If you do you will find out in no time that most of your made-up words DO exist. And since you do not get penalties for them try as many as you wish.

The game is simple. You shake the letter cubes and when they are all in place you try to make as many words as possible by following a continuous path through adjacent letters in the rack. (Diagonal counts as adjacent) The path need not be straight, but each letter in the path can only be used once. You have three minutes (sand clock included) to do so. Only words that are three letters or more are permitted.

You can't go wrong with this game, plus it is not expensive. It's worth a try.

ADVANCED PLAYERS: If you look around you might find Boggle Master. That edition has a 5x5 grid and 9 more letter cubes. You still have three minutes (and the grid is as noisy as ever) but you can make a lot more points in this one. Happy hunting and good luck.

This is a great game that our whole family enjoys. We own both the four-by-four and five-by-five versions and we definitely like the bigger one better. Since it has 25 letters, it offers much more opportunities to find more words and longer words.

This is a wonderful educational game. It helps build vocabulary, (for kids and grown-ups alike) and improve spelling skills. (We double check spelling and the existence and meanings of odd words on dictionary.com) I even recommended that one of my son's friends start playing Boggle to prepare for taking the College board SATs.

We've set a rule that all words must be at least four letters and we try to find longer ones. There are some strategies I've taught my kids (It seems like I've played this game since I was a kid)

Here are some tips: look for endings you can build beginnings onto, like -tion, -oint, -aint -ight, -ent, -ant, -ind, -ate, -ite, -ath, -ith, -eel, -een, -st, .

Then look for common word parts that you can add to after the endings, like -ing, -s, -ed, -ated.

Or look for beginnings which have multiple letters which you can end with. For example, Starting with FOO, you can get Food, fool, foot. For Scoo you can get scoop, scoot, scooter, scooper, scooping, scoopings.

Since you get higher scores for longer letters, it pays to take more time looking for longer words, or for letters you can add to shorter words you find. I like to go for really long words. My partner likes to write as many words as she can. Sometimes, I'll come up with just a dozen words compared to her 30 or 40 words in the allotted three minutes.

But my word scores usually add up to higher counts.

We've agreed to use slashes to delineate when we write a word that has other words within it.

For example,

expectoration (spitting) would be written expect/o/ration.
That way we break out expect, oration and ration.

If you wrote expect/oration then I would get the two points for ration and the other words would cancel each other out.

We usually play games to 200. It is not uncommon, in a single round, to see scores of 20, and occasionally we'll see scores of 40, 60, 80 and on rare occasions, 100 to 120. Remember, that's with the five by five version.
Lastly, I would not call this a board game.
Have fun.

My family and I simply love board games. Every holiday season we get about 10 new ones. When I got Boggle for my birthday, I was like, "Oh, wow. This looks really boring and confusing." To my, and my family's, surprise, it was awesome and easy to comprehend and play!!
The rules are really simple. All you have to do is shake up the dice with letters on them. Then, flip the 1 minute timer over. Then, write down all the words that are 3 or more letters long that you see.
This is one of our favorite games now. Here is an example of a puzzle you can get. See how many words that are 3 or more letters you can find!!
O R T E
B H U A
E I Y E
S T E M
So, did you find orbit?? What about eat?? Did you see eye?? I'll bet you found stem. There are there are those words and more in those 16 mixed up letters!!
After you write all the words you saw down, you compare them to the other players' answers. When you're comparing, you're normally like, "OMG!! I can't believe I didn't notice that one!" This game is a blast and I strongly recommend it to everyone!!

Prove to your family that all that money they paid for college is worth it. You can get really creative in word choice and let your family guess if it is a word. Fun family activity for everyone.

In Boggle, players race a 3-minute timer to find word combinations across adjacent letter cubes shaken randomly onto a 4x4 grid.

Because most possible words are three or four letters long, younger players don't need a big vocabulary to find several, while players who scan for longer words get higher scores (e.g., 5 points for a 7-letter word versus 1 point for 3- and 4-letter ones). Playing Boggle is a good introduction to Scrabble and other word games, while clock management skills should help with chess and test-taking.

If you find it too easy to find most/all possible words in a typical Boggle game, you might seek out Big Boggle (not currently sold in the United States -- too much texting, perhaps?) which features a 5-by-5 grid and bigger words.