Dainty Diva
Thursday, November 25, 2004
Feeling really, really bored so decided to blog.
I will be stuck in hall this week until saturday, which is super duper boring. Have boggle training on tuesday and thurday nights, carrom briefing on friday evening and 'past and present' on saturday from 1 to 7pm. So sad, gonna waste an entire week in hall. No tv shows to watch ( i wanna watch Vincent on mighty-in-laws!!), no yummy home-cooked food for meals... sigh...
why must boggle competition be held only when school starts next semester? Then training will be on throughout the whole hols and the 'stay in hall from tuesday till friday' cycle will continue until competition is over.
Well, I like playing boggle and of course, proud to be able to play for my hall (after all, Hall 3 was 2nd last year!!) but training is super tiring. Though it is not a physical activity, it is enough to kill several hundreds of brain cells. Imagine playing a word game for 3 hours from 8 till 11pm... and usually we wont end at 11pm... training tends to drag till 1am. Geez... my brain usually shuts down by 10pm or so...
In case u guys have not figured out how the game looks like and how it is being played, let me show u...
THIS is a boggle set... 16 tiles and an hourglass...
Each game lasts for 3 minutes and players have to form as many words as possible using the 16 alphabets. The words can be formed vertically, horizontally, diagonally or adjacent to each other. As shown in the photo, you can see how the words 'hot', 'one' and 'den' can be formed.
You think the game is easy? Let me show u what we have to learn...
3 letter word list
We have to memorise all the 3 letter words on this piece of paper from A to Z... and mind you, look at those words i've circled. Do they look anything like English to you? And how the heck do you pronouce them? I think it will be easier to learn if i know the pronounciation. The accepted words for boggle are not the usual words we see in a normal dictionary. We also have a boggle dictionary to check our words against. Besides the 3 letter words, there are many other interesting words we learn when playing.
Like my all-time favourite and i can remember it best is the word 'tor'. I like this word cos its a physical landform which i learned in A-levels Geography. For this word, it can take back hooks 'a nice story' , which means that 'tor' can go with a, n, i, c, e ..... at the end. So words like 'tora', 'torn', 'tore' can be formed. Interesting eh?
Anyway, tuesday's training went on quite smoothly and the boards we played were rather interesting. I even managed to form a 8 letter word 'squirrel' which is a 7-point word! i think i lacked confidence... when i played with the juniors, i scored much better... like 40 odd for bigger boards and 20 odd for smaller ones. But when i played with captain and another peer, i scored much much lower. Sigh... when can i be as good as them? Better end off here and go study my 3s...
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