From the introduction, words are made by moving from adjacent letter to adjacent
letter vertically, horizontally, or diagonally; a letter may be returned to in
a word, but the same letter can't be used twice in a row. The Boggle
board in the game played ended up with 16 different letters: ABEFGILMNOPRSTUY.
By clue 5, in forming the word BEST, Chad made two consecutive horizontal
moves; so he either went B-E-S in a straight line or E-S-T. However, from the
word OFTEN in clue 2, the E and T must also touch, which they cannot do in the
second case. We will solve the letter adjacencies first, then determine the
orientation later; so we put these letters on the Boggle board
arbitrarily as follows:
BES BES
.T. ..T
By clue 2, the N must be adjacent to both the T (ANT) and E (OFTEN); the N
must also touch the S (SNAG in clue 1). The N must therefore fit in our
arbitrary arrangement as follows:
BES BES
.TN .NT
Given the word SLIT (1) and the first of our two possible arrangements, we
would have:
BES.
.TNL
..I.
However, there is no way to form SULTAN in clue 1. So, our second
arrangement from above is the only one possible:
BES
.NT
From SULTAN (1), the A must be adjacent to both N and T:
BES BES
.NT .NT
.A. ..A
However, since the L must touch the S in SLIT (1) and touch the
A in LAMP (3), there is no way the first arrangement can work; and
the L must be added as
BES.
.NTL
..A.
From SULTAN (1),
BESU
.NTL
..A.
SLIT (1),
BESU
.NTL
..AI
and OFTEN (2) we get
BESU
.NTL
.FAI
Since the G in SNAG (1) must go below A in what is the 4th row,
the Y and R in RYE in clue 4 fill out the other three rows:
BESU
YNTL
RFAI
There are three ways that the G in SNAG (1) can fit:
BESU BESU BESU
YNTL YNTL YNTL
RFAI RFAI RFAI
.G.. ..G. ...G
Given the first possibility, the M and P in LAMP (3) would have to fit in
to the right of the G and the O in OFTEN (2) to the left--but MOAT (3)
cannot be made. Trying the second arrangement, M and P from LAMP would be
to the left of G--but there would be no way to make OFTEN. So the third
arrangement remains. We try all arrangements of the M and P from LAMP with
O from OFTEN:
BESU BESU BESU
YNTL YNTL YNTL
RFAI RFAI RFAI
OPMG OMPG PMOG
Only the third one allows MOAT (3) to be made. We now test the various
alternative orientations:
BESU USEB BYRP PRYB
YNTL LTNY ENFM MFNE
RFAI IAFR STAO OATS
PMOG GOMP ULIG GILU
PMOG GOMP ULIG GILU
RFAI IAFR STAO OATS
YNTL LTNY ENFM MFNE
BESU USEB BYRP PRYB
By clue 4, RYE was partly formed by an upper left-to-lower right
diagonal move, so only two of the arrangements are possible:
PRYB PMOG
MFNE RFAI
OATS YNTL
GILU BESU
However, by clue 5, B wasn't in the upper-right-hand corner. The
Boggle board was as follows:
PMOG
RFAI
YNTL
BESU
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