Boggle® is a popular Parker Brothers word game based on a grid of four letters high and four letters wide such as this:

E Y H S
D S L G
H E L T
B F I M

IRC Boggle Rules

To play you just connect your IRC client to IRC.ZUH.Net ( You can use our Java Client Here) then /join #boggle and if a game isn't already running and Boggler is there, just type START GAME on the channel. Once Boggler displays the grid you "/msg Boggler WORD" and substiture the word you see on the grid for "WORD". Boggler will tell you how many point that word is worth or if he doesn't have a match for that word on that grid. Boggler knows over 170,000 words, but even with that many he still might miss some here and there. A hint is to open a Query window to Boggler so you don't have to type "/msg Boggler" for each word, in most IRC clients you can do this by typing "/query Boggler" and then you just type each word to him, one per line.

There are three selectable levels of difficulty, Easy, Medium and Hard. To select a difficulty level start a game by typing the desired difficulty level after the "START GAME" command, ie: "START GAME EASY" or "START GAME HARD". You can abbreviate the difficulty keyword to just the first letter, "START GAME M" is the same as "START GAME MEDIUM". Easy is a grid with 175 or more possible words, Medium is 101 to 174 and Hard is 100 words or less. If no difficulty level is provided with "START GAME" Boggler will randomly choose one.

Boggler will keep track of everyone's score and at the end of the game will display a summary of how many points each player scored. If your score is high enough to make the Top Ten List he'll add you to it and congratulate you. The current Top Ten List can be viewed on channel by typing "SHOW SCORES" into the channel window. To see All-Time Top Ten lists for each difficulty level on channel type "!SCORES EASY", "!SCORES MEDIUM" and "!SCORES HARD" respectively. If you join the channel while a game in progess you can type "!BOARD" on channel and Boggler will display the current letter grid so you can join in right away. During a game you can type !TIME on channel or simply TIME in provate message to Boggler and he will let you know how many seconds are left in the current game.

If you send the private msg "SCORE" to Boggler during a game, he'll tell you how many points you have so far in that game.

Right now there aren't many options or tournament play, it's just straight up "Boggle" with a few small differences from the Parker Brothers game. Boggler doesn't subtract scores for words which two or more players get, it allows many popular abbreviations, acronyms and names as words and some plural words aren't included in the dictionary even through their singular counterparts are. Also, the "Qu" letter combination will never show up in a letter grid due to the nature of the dictionary parsing routines used to generate valid wordlists for each letter grid.

In IRC the letter grid is spaced for normal width proportional fonts. BH's favorite IRC window font is Verdana. If you are using a fixed width font such as System or FixedSys the letters will not be aligned properly. In mIRC you can change the font for the current window using the "Font" menu item for the window. As an alternative you can use the fixed-width Boggle Web Letter Grid Here which is updated every time a new game is started. You can also "/MSG Boggle PBOARD" and he will message you back a letter grid using even spacing for a fixed-width font.

Command Summary     (Commands are CASE insensitive)

Public on Channel Commands:

"Start Game" with optional difficulty keyword (or letter) of Easy, Medium or Hard

"!Board" - Redisplay the letter grid (then can't be repeated for several seconds)

"!Time" - Display amount of time remainig in this game.

"Show Scores" - List the current Top Ten List

"!Scores Easy" - List the All-Time Easy Game Top Ten List (show e)

"!Scores Medium" - List the All-Time Medium Game Top Ten List (show m)

"!Scores Hard" - List the All-Time Hard Game Top Ten List (show h)

Private Message Commands:

any_word - Any word answer during gameplay

"Time" - Display amount of time remaining in this game.

"Score" - Display your current game score during gameplay

"Pboard" - Display an even spaced grid which looks good when using fixed-width fonts

"Help" - A simple one line message directing you here

ZUH IRC Boggle was written from scratch by BH on November 5th and 6th of 2003. Like ZUH IRC Trivia (#Trivia), it will probably take a while to get bugs worked out and features added, but so far it works great!

S  E  O  X
N  L  R  O
B  L  H  Y
E  F  I  N

IRC Trivia is also available on ZUH IRC!

Boggle® is a registered trademark of Parker Brothers/Hasbro. ZUH IRC has no affiliation with Parker Brothers and IRC Boggle has no association with them either!