Broggle!

Here it is... my first Java program! It should be appearing in a separate window any moment now. It may take a few minutes to download, and it requires a JDK 1.1-compatible browser such as Netscape 4.06 or MSIE 4.01. (Internet Explorer seems to work best, for reasons that I don't understand.) You appear to be using .

W E L C

O M E T

O B R O

G G L E

Okay, so what are we trying to do here, anyway?

Try to find as many words in the pattern of letters as you can. Words must have at least 3 letters and can go up, down, and all around -- they can "bend," as long as the consecutive letters are adjacent and no letter tile repeated within a word. (Yes, they're tiles, not dice. Can't you tell?)

For example, the pattern shown at the right does not contain "MEMBER" because you the M tile can be used only once in a word. It does not contain "BOOGER" because the G and E tiles are not adjacent. On the other hand, it does contain the word "BOOMER."

The allowable words are those contained in a list that I downloaded from Boris Bard's Scrabble Helper. (Thanks Boris!) It's a long list, which naturally is why Broggle takes so long to download.

Options

Click on "Options" on the game board for various choices, including hexagons (see? I told you they're not dice) and different-sized arrays. You can also choose a 2-player game or alternative scoring.

Scoring

Scoring? Glad you asked. The default is Scrabble scoring, which gives more points for seldom-used letters, as follows: 1 point for each A, E, I, L, N, O, R, S, T, or U; 2 points for each D or G; 3 points each each B, C, M, or P; 4 points for each F, H, V, W, or Y; 5 points for each K; 8 points for each J or X; 10 points for each Q or Z;

You can also choose Boggle scoring, which gives you 1 point for 3- or 4-letter words, 2 points for 5-letter words, 3 points for 6- or 7-letter words, and 11 points for longer words.

Using the mouse and keyboard

The keyboard should work, as long as there is a flashing cursor in the text entry box. If not, click there with the mouse first. To conclude entry of a word, press Enter (Return) or the Space Bar. You can also use Escape to clear the text entry box.

The mouse should work fine too, although my invisible "enter button" may not be readily apparent. To conclude entering a word, you can click near the pattern of letters. (Hey, I like it -- though I'm not sure if anyone else does.)

In 1-player mode, you can go back and forth between mouse and keyboard as much as you want. In 2-player mode, one player uses the keyboard and the other player uses the mouse. Only the FIRST person to enter any particular word gets credit for it. This may not be completely fair, but at least it allows frenzied head-to-head competition. :-)

Incidentally, you can go on entering words after time runs out, but your score will not be incremented. At this time, you will also be given a chance to see all the words you've missed. (Most mortals find these lists to be quite shockingly long, so don't feel bad if you missed some obvious words!)

Broggle is sized to match its window. If it is too big or too small, you can resize the window in MSIE4. (I've given up trying to get this to work in Netscape.)

The Broggle program was updated on January 2, 1999. Let me know if you see any nasty bugs or if you have suggestions for improvement!

brett

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