Where on the web can you play a friendly game of Boggle online?

How To Play Boggle

The goal of Boggle is for the player to find words in a 4 x 4 grid of letters.

In the original Parker Brothers / Hasbro Boggle game, shown at right, the letter grid is created by shaking letter-faced dice into a grid. A sand timer is used to time the game. When time runs out, the player’s score is based on how many valid words they found, with longer words counting progressively more than shorter words.

Online Boggle Games

Boggle is a lot of fun as an actual, physical game, but how does it translate into the online world? Often the answer is “pretty well.” Done right, online Boggle is a great casual game that you can jump in and play for five minutes or on which you can spend hours.

Interactive Boggle

Interactive Boggle is a fine recreation of the standard board game.

The interface is a bit clunky but it gets the job done. Words are entered in a basic text area, one word per line, and unlike Weboggle and Babble there is no immediate feedback as to whether the word is valid or if it has already been entered. One unique feature to Interactive Boggle is that you are penalized for invalid words, so mitigates the lack of instant feedback on those at least.

After a game you can enter your name. If your name is in the recent top eight it appears for a few rounds, after which it drops off. High scores and names do not appear to be saved past these few rounds.

Weboggle

Weboggle is a fast game of boggle, on either a 4×4 or a 5×5 board, against dozens of other players. In the 4×4 variant the minimum word length is the normal three, but in a 5×5 game you need to find words of at least four letters.

If you enter an invalid word it is listed on the right in green, invalid or duplicate or too-short words are listed in red.

Scores are shown after each game, as are words only you got, words you missed, and words everyone missed. Clicking a name highlights the words that person got, which hovering over a words highlights the people who got that words.

Babble

Babble is clearly the smoothest and most impressive of the three, though here it is one game per day on a 5×5 grid with a four letter per word minimum. To play you must register, though you can do so for free. If you pony up $14.95 you get more features, some of which are available for two weeks when you first sign up.

The high score system includes three lists of players and their points. The first is “Cream o’ the Crop” which ranks players by their average per game score. The second list is the “Village Elders,” which ranks players by their cumulative point totals “since the dawn of Babble.” The third is “Who’s Hot,” which ranks players by average score over the last 30 days. Your points for all these lists are displayed.

A chat window to the right of the board ties together the friendly Babble community and keeps them sharing word clues and life stories.

Babble was created by the author of Iron Sudoku.

What’s The Best Online Boggle Game?

Strictly speaking, the best pure Boggle translation to the online world is probably Interactive Boggle. Unfortunately, Interactive Boggle also provides the least fun. Weboggle does a good job at keeping things fast and giving immediate feedback. It also provides two grid sizes, which offers some nice variety.

Babble, though, is the cream of the crop here. The interface is interesting and polished, the community is warm, and though the games last an entire day, each game is challenging enough to warrant the slow pace.

Tags: Boardgames · Free · Online games · Reviews