ChrisLo.ca

Edit: I strongly recommend playing Jumblewords instead at hobub.com. Games are faster, more challenging, and include more detailed statistics to help you track and improve your skills.

An Argument for Pressing Enter Rather Than Backspace

In Boggle Bash, there is no penalty for entering an invalid word.  If in your spree of typing you made a typo at the very beginning of a word, I would recommend NOT backspacing to correct the error if you have already typed most of the word.  Hit Enter to enter what you have anyway, and start over.  Who knows, the word you accidentally entered may actually be a legitimate one!

Note: Optimally you’d want to do this if the number of keystrokes to hit Enter and retype the letters up to your typo is less than the number of times you’d have to hit backspace (although one could argue the number can be slightly more since it is generally faster to hit Enter and other keys than hitting backspace the same number of times in succession; also, since the errant word may actually be a legitimate one, you don’t want to backspace a word that would have scored).

An Argument to Keep Typing Rather Than Backspace

Suppose the word you were thinking of doesn’t actually connect on the board.  In the middle of typing the word, Boggle Bash will give you an audio clue that the path does not exist upon entering the disjoint letter.  Again, I would suggest not to get rattled and start backspacing, but to simply follow through with the word you wanted to enter, and just hit Enter (again your errant word might actually score!).

If you want to keep it simple, I would suggest the following general guideline: never press backspace more than twice in a row.  Either hit Enter or keep typing anyway.

Keeping a Mental Queue

As illustrated in the previous post about typing, it is faster to simply think of words than typing those words.  Use the time it takes you to type to continue analyzing the board for words.  You will want to look ahead, building a mental queue of words you want to enter, and thus make typing a background task.  There is a limit on how big of a queue you can manage (depending on your short term memory), but any time you can focus less on typing and more on identifying words, clusters and high scoring point regions, the better.  This concept will become clearer when clusters and suffixes are discussed in future posts.

Notes on Other Input Methods When You Can`t Use the Keyboard

If you’re playing a version of Boggle where keyboard input is not allowed (e.g. the actual board game, or Zynga Scramble on the iPhone/iPad), I do have a few suggestions to offer based on my experience.

Writing down words in the actual board game is by far the slowest input method.  You will almost think many multiple words per minute more than you can write.   At some point in time early in the round you will want to give the entire board a quick analysis to identify the point-rich regions and clusters.  Identify some easy words at the beginning of the round, and while you are writing those words down, do the scan of the entire board and start keeping a mental queue.  Use some of the tips already described in this post: if a word doesn’t exist or is invalid, don’t erase letters, either stop writing the word or continue writing what you wanted, and move on.

Note that in Boggle Bash, scanning the entire board early in the round is less of a necessity.  If you manage to type 80+ words per minute, usually the time it takes to enter those first few words will not buy you enough time to scan the entire board.  It is usually sufficient to simply gravitate towards the obvious suffixes and general higher scoring regions, but not necessarily the highest scoring regions.  Usually there will be sufficient time to traverse the board and naturally find the highest scoring region.

On a further note, if you are playing a version where you cannot duplicate a word already entered by another player, it actually becomes more important to do the scan in the early part of the round.  Yahoo! Games Word Racer is one such variation of the game.  I would suggest here NOT starting in the upper-left corner: start typing small clusters in another region, and use that time to do a quick scan of the entire board.  Immediately attack the suffixes and higher scoring regions.  There are many other suggestions I have for variants such as Word Racer, but they are out of scope for this guide.

For touch devices such as IPad or IPhones, word entry should be done with a dragging motion between letters and not a touch-typing motion.  In the case of Zynga Scramble, a dragging motion automatically enters the word once your finger leaves the screen, whereas if you were selecting one letter at a time, you have to perform one more “stroke” to enter the word (it also takes longer to repeatedly having to lift and press your finger for each letter).  The finger-drag method can actually be just as fast as typing (I would estimate my speed around 60 words per minute), so essentially most of what has been discussed in this guide applies equally for touch devices.

TL;DR

Don’t use backspace to correct typos at the beginning of words.

Don’t worry if the word you think of does not even connect on the board.  Just type it in anyway.

Edit: I strongly recommend playing Jumblewords instead at hobub.com. Games are faster, more challenging, and include more detailed statistics to help you track and improve your skills. The statistics specifically include KPS and MPS metrics — you can see how that over time when using the keyboard you will be able to enter more keystrokes per second than you can do mouse actions per second.

While some players are convinced they are better with the mouse than with the keyboard, it simply isn’t possible to regularly score high unless you are typing.

Thinking vs. Mousing vs. Typing Words Per Minute

Pretend you had the ability to enter words on the Boggle grid using just your thoughts.  You visualize the path of letters, form the word in your head, and hypothetically transmit those thoughts to your computer.

Now suppose a round was only one minute long.  If you are able to think of 50 words in that minute from the grid, you would either: (a) have to mouse 50 words per minute, or (b) type 50 words per minute, in order to enter all the words you had in your mind.

The point here is that if you can think faster than you can type or mouse, your potential score will always be limited based on your input method.  If you can think 50 wpm, but only mouse 10 wpm, you are only going to get 10 words entered in a minute-long round of Boggle.  Contrast this with typing, where it is much easier to type 30 wpm (or faster), thus getting 30 words entered in a minute-long round of Boggle.

Mousing the exact path in a grid also takes a lot more mental energy.  Making sure the mouse connects the correct cubes takes a certain amount of coordination and concentration, and it just gets worse if you happen to make a mistake and you have to try to correct it.

Typing on the other hand, with enough practice, can be done with very little concentration where it almost becomes a reflex.  Also with enough practice, your typing speed can outpace your thought speed (especially on dry boards with very few words).  Personally, I type on average 90 to 100 words per minute.  On very generous boards, even at this typing speed I am usually thinking of more words to enter per minute than I can type.

Improving Typing Speed

It pays to stop using the mouse, and start typing the proper way (i.e. using home row).  I can’t give much advice here since I’m not a keyboarding expert, but I’m sure you will be able to find many resources on the internet if you do not already know how to type using the proper method.  Type properly, and keep practicing.  You may think you mouse faster than you type, but after a period of time, your typing will become very natural, and very fast.

Sadly, I think my typing speed has plateaued at 90 to 100 words per minute.  There are definitely people out there than can type above 100 words per minute, but everyone will have varying limits on their dexterity.  However, I don’t give up.  I know that on some days I am typing much faster than my average, so I always work on trying to maintain that above average pace.  Sometimes it’s a good idea to not play very long sessions, but sprint several shorter sessions.

TL;DR

Don’t use the mouse to enter in words.  Type and keep practicing!

Edit: I strongly recommend playing Jumblewords instead at hobub.com. Games are faster, more challenging, and include more detailed statistics to help you track and improve your skills. I haven’t continued writing this guide in anticipation of changing all my tips and strategies to apply specifically to Jumblewords instead of Boggle Bash (and obviously there are enough similarities between all word search games that these tips and tricks would work in general for all of them, as already noted below). However, since Jumblewords is as far as I know the first game to allow players to input two-letter words, and also introduce several bonuses awarding quickness and accuracy, and also offers a higher probability of getting “perfect” on a given board, there will be added tips to accomodate these new concepts.

Purpose of this Guide

I am writing this guide to impart some of my experience to improve your Boggle score.  I have been a “Boggler” since the days of WordWeb on ClassicGames and Tangleword on Playsite, both which are now extinct.  Currently I frequent Boggle Bash at pogo.com under the pseudonym “ChucklingRhinos”.  Some players accuse me of being a “bot” (an automated program that scans the grid for all the possible words and enters them) or of cheating in general.  This guide will hopefully clarify that it is possible to obtain high scores on a regular basis in Boggle, without any additional aids.

Note that these tips and tricks are written with Pogo.com’s Boggle Bash/Party in mind, but you can apply them to virtually any Boggle-type game (e.g. Yahoo! Games’ Word Racer, Zynga Scramble, etc.).  This guide will be written as a series of blog posts, organized in a table of contents.

A Word on Cheating

This guide is not trying to prove that all consistently high scorers are legitimate players.  There are unfortunately a handful of cheaters that exist.  As a software engineer, I am aware of what’s required to cheat at Boggle.  A “bot” generally performs three tasks: scraping the screen, passing the grid to the solving algorithm, and automating the output.  Sometimes those without the required software will cheat simply by using the algorithm (which is readily available online), and will do the screen reading and output manually.  Either way, there are telltale signs of a cheater, and likewise there are signs of a legitimately strong player.  A section of this guide will elaborate more on these topics: methods to identify cheaters, how the solving algorithm works, and steps you can take to prevent cheating.

Summary of the Game

If you’ve reached this page while specifically searching for tips, you probably already know the general rules to the game so I won’t delve into this topic too much.  You can always find the complete set of rules at the gaming site you play at.

A grid of letters in a round of Pogo's Boggle Bash.

But in case you didn’t know already, Boggle is a widely known board game whose objective is to find as many words three letters or longer, each word formed by a path of adjacent letters in a 4 by 4 grid, within a specified time limit.  There is no penalty for an invalid word, but each “cube” in the grid can only be used once per word.  Every three or four-letter word scores one point, five-letter words score two points each, six-letter words score three, seven-letter words five, and eight letters or more score eleven.  There are variants of the game, such as different board sizes and shapes, different point distributions, and extra points for getting a word first.

Continue to the Table of Contents.