Julia Turner argues that the game Boggle vastly outclasses the more popular Scrabble and thus deserves its own gaming circuit:
Scrabble is all about constraints; you trickle out one mingy word per turn. Boggle begets a
deluge, with bits of the language bobbing from your eye to your mind to the page. Part of the fun is the challenge of seeing the words on the board, looking for promising groupings (an ED, say, or an ING) and then manipulating the surrounding letters in your mind until you find words that work. [Scrabble champion Will] Anderson also pointed out another mental skill required by Boggle that has no analogue in Scrabble, something he calls the “mental queue.”
Often, an ace Boggler will see a bunch of words at once and must hold them in his head until he can record them all with his pen (or keyboard)—all while his eyes are roving on to hunt out the next word. All that mental activity feels strangely serene when you get the rhythm right. Scratching words out on paper, keeping a keen ear to the pace of your rivals’ scribbling, finding the next run of related words—DINTED, DENTED, MINTED, DEMENTED—these are sensations of pure joy. …
It’s time to demand that Hasbro—or Winning Moves, or someone!—reissue the classic implementation of the game. It’s time to launch a competitive Boggle circuit so that expert Bogglers can get their due. And, most of all, it’s time to stop cowering before our Scrabble-mad peers.
Update from a confident reader:
I am ready for the game (and myself, in tandem) to ascend. I have no idea what qualities of the mind are specific to Boggle, but apparently finding word strings in a fixed grid is the chief gift I was given by providence. Mere mention of the game in my circle of friends starts a cascade of reminiscences about my freakish ability. (Mind you, this group includes a former National Merit Scholar and a Harvard linguist who got a perfect score on his SAT.) We all knew something was up when, the first time six of us sat down to play, I cancelled out all but a few of everyone’s words (only words unique to the group’s combined list score) while filling a page with enough of my own to reach the agreed-upon winning score. Favorite word string: estivate (d), (s), (ing). Longest word I remember finding: interrogatory (ies).
Let there but be a substantive surge in the game’s popularity and I may finally escape my anonymity. Game on!
Previous Dish on Scrabble and its discontents here.
(Photo by Mike Ambs)
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