The Mind Boggles

One of my favorite webs site for whiling away a few minutes between tasks is WordSplay, which is by far the best Boggle site I have seen on the Interwebs. Written completely in JavaScript, it has a 4×4 board and a 5×5 board to choose from, and once your three minutes of furious typing is up, your score is tallied and displayed along with all the others who competed in that round.

I am at somewhat of a disadvantage since I’m a hunter and pecker, not a touch-typist, but I can still win the odd 4×4 round when the word count is low (and the real pros aren’t racking up massive totals). As for 5×5, well, if I get on the first page of the scoreboard I am doing well!

One of the interesting aspects of the site is the number of people who use their screen name (which can be changed at any time) to make a political statement. Hence you get the Obama supporters, and the Obama haters, and a fair number of people proclaiming “Jesus Loves You”, “Jesus Is Lord”, or “U Have a Friend In Jesus” and so on. I must admit that occasionally they would prompt me to change my screen name to something like “Jesus, Your Imaginary Friend” — a little petty I know, but it used to irritate me that they would pester the rest of us with their proselytizing when all we want to do is play Boggle for a few minutes. In the end I just used the screen name “Above Us Only Sky” and left it at that.

Another cool aspect of the site is that you can form teams with other players—particularly fun if you’re not one a regular high scorer. Since I started playing the 5×5 board, I have noticed that it’s the religious teams that get the most traction, followed by the usual pro/anti-Obama teams. Thus you will almost always see a “Team JesusIssovereign” (of course it’s got to be more explicit than “Team Christian”), a “Team Atheist,” a “Team Jewish,” and even a “Team Catholic.” Thus the religious divide that exists in society reaches even into Boggleland! The one notable exception is the regular “Team Pirates, Aarrgh!” because you can never have too many pirates playing Boggle.