How to find the long words in Boggle

Hunt endings, not beginnings

Your eye naturally starts at a letter and wanders. Reverse it. Look for ING, ERS, EST, ED and ION in the grid first, then work backwards from them for stems that fit.

An ING sitting in a corner is worth minutes of searching, because almost any verb you can reach turns into a six letter word.

Take every plural

Once you find a word, check whether an S touches its last letter. People leave dozens of points on the board by finding BOARD and never looking for BOARDS.

The same goes for the other free endings. If you found PLAY, check for PLAYS, PLAYED and PLAYER before moving on.

Scan the prefixes

RE, UN, DE, IN and OUT at the start of a chain turn short words you already have into long ones. Finding TURN is fine; finding RETURN is twice as good.

This is the quickest way to convert a board you think you have exhausted into another thirty points.

Rotate the board

The rotate buttons change nothing about the puzzle and everything about what you see. After a few minutes your eye has learned the shape of the grid and stops noticing other paths. A quarter turn resets that, and words appear that were there the whole time.

Remember the diagonals

Every square touches eight others, and beginners trace words along rows and columns far more than diagonally. If you are stuck, deliberately look for a path that steps diagonally twice in a row.