Boggle 4x4

Boggle is a word game that involves building words by connecting adjacent letters on a 4x4 grid (a square board of 16 random letters).

The goal is to find as many words (and the longest possible ones) before time runs out.

Enter the letters in the cells (write the letters at once in the first cell, they will be replaced automatically in the grid).

All words solution existing in the chosen dictionary and that can be entered in the grid respecting the Boggle rules will be displayed.

dCode can handle common format of Boggle 4x4, Boggle 5x5 etc. but also custom size Boggle NxN (even distinct height and width).

A joker (special dice meaning any letter) can be written with the characters * or ?

Blank cells (empty, impossible to use) are also accepted by leaving the cell empty.

Also cells can have more than one letter (such as TH or QU) and will be considered as inseparable.

Boogle has multiple variations:

— Different board sizes, Boggle 5x5 (Big Boggle), Super Big Boggle (6x6), or a custom size (see the Boggle NxN solver).

— Use of diagonally touching letters (allowed by default)

— Use of wildcards (squares that can be any letter)

— Use of black (blocking) or empty (unusable) squares

— Use of squares containing multiple letters (considered a block of letters or a choice among letters)

— Use of the same square multiple times (the word can loop and return to use a square)

— Allowing edge joining (the left edge then touches the right edge and the top meets the bottom)

— Consulting the dictionary by players (otherwise considered cheating)

— Limiting the dictionary to certain words or themes

— Scoring based on length or the use of certain letters or squares

— Solo play, timing your performances or trying to beat a previous score

There are online versions of Boggle, paper versions (BrainBusters), electronic versions, etc.

In its original version Boggle 4x4, the official rule give these points:

— 3 letters = 1 point

— 4 letters = 1 point

— 5 letters = 2 points

— 6 letters = 3 points

— 7 letters = 5 points

— 8 letters or more = 11 points

At the end of the allotted time, each player takes turns reading their word list. Words on multiple lists are crossed out/ignored and do not count as points.

Points are therefore only scored for unique words (words not found by other players).

Some tips to improve your performance:

— Prioritize prefixes and suffixes (IN, DE, ES, ING)

— Look for common bigrams and trigrams (ION, NTH, THE)

— Identify rare letters (Q, Z, X), either to ignore them (and find as many words as possible) or to build words around them (fewer words but rarer, therefore potentially more points).

— Play regularly and practice with solvers like dCode to expand your vocabulary.

Depending on the version of Boggle and the game language used, sometimes it is assumed that the letter Q is substituted for QU. Indeed, Q is often followed by a U.

The 4x4 English Boggle game has 16 dices:

AACIOT, ABILTY, ABJMOQu, ACELRS, ACEMPR, ADENVZ, AHMORS, BFIORX, DENOSW, DKNOTU, EEFHIY, EGINTV, EGKLUY, EHINPS, ELPSTU, GILRUW

The maximum number of words that can be written on a square Boggle grid of size N is described mathematically as the number of paths on a graph, see here

Assuming that all the letters are distinct and the presence of all the words in the dictionary, then on a 2x2 grid, there are 64 paths (4 words of 1 letters, 12 words of 2 letters, 24 words of 3 letters and 24 4-letter words), on a 3x3 grid there are 10305 words, on a 4x4 grid there are 12029640 words (12 millions) and on a 5x5 grid there are 115066382913 (115 billions).

In practice, it is common to find only a hundred dictionary words on a 4x4 grid.

The game is called Boggle, the writing Boogle is wrong, probably a confusion with the writing of Google, having a similar pronunciation.