How did you get so well at Boggle? Hints & Tips?

[anonymuse]

It amazes me when I see average scores over 200 and average words over 50. I'm lucky if I score 100 and get 30 words.

I'm a decent typist and college educated, but WOW!

How did you get so well at Boggle? Any tips or hints for us newbies?

[hyperrific]

for me, it's a mix of picking up word combinations/typing speed (681kpm)/learning how to -look-. my first boggle game was word racers on yahoo, which sped me up, but didn't help me in terms of stamina/finding lengthy words.

mostly, i look for prefixes and suffixes, your er's and re's and ed's and ing's and whenever s's are around, that gets exciting. i learned to move my eye around, and sometimes see the board as a whole... some words just pop.

i used to get the easy words first, but now i see them as a waste of time. i should clarify, by easy i mean the three letters that grant one point each. like eat, ate eta tae era ear are tar rat art etc. i use those when i need time to look for the meatier ones, for then i'm scoring points while i'm looking and hopefully finding more.

i guess a lot, too!

i've improved drastically in the past year. a while ago, i would probably see er's and ing's and not pay attention to them or not even see them because i would go for the shorter words. i really had to learn to move my eye while moving my fingers as fast while not drowning in the flow of letters.

http://weboggle.shackworks.com helped without me realizing because it's up 24/7, there's 10 seconds between each game, so it affords you a lot of practice/good competition (i thought i was good until i got there). i like that website because unlike tangleword/word racers, everyone gets three minutes to get as many words as you can. it gradually builds your eye stamina. and some boards suck (there have been boards where the highest score was 1) more than others, so you'll learn to really look and pick up some esoteric words along the way. yay.

so overall, look for prefixes/suffixes. learn some new words every now and then. go for some longer words. and with time, you'll just get better and better.

cheers!

unabashedly addicted to boggle ;],
-hyperrific.

[HotTarget]

Hi.....try to pay attention to the words other people get that you do not. Then attempt to memorize some of them....Start out with similar words.....An example would be (ae).......tae, hae, nae, kae, xae, mae, gae. Then the words off of those such as........haen, haet, haem, tael, gaen. Okay, and remember things like etna.......which is ante backwards. Also.....a lot of words are made by adding an e on the end.....seta....setae...

Good luck!