Porchlight › How to play › Baffle
How to play Baffle
A word hunt for two to eight players. Everyone searches the same grid of letters at the same time, against the clock.
The aim
Find words that nobody else finds. A word found by more than one player scores for nobody. The highest total over all the rounds wins.
Setting up
Each round, letter dice are shaken into a grid: 4 × 4, or 5 × 5 on the big board. Every player sees the same grid.
Playing
A round lasts three minutes on a Normal timer. Enter as many words as you can, one at a time. During the round you can see how many words each player has found, but not which words.
What counts as a word
- Touching letters. Each letter must touch the one before it: up, down, sideways or diagonally.
- Each die once. A word can't use the same die twice.
- Long enough. At least 3 letters on the 4 × 4 board, or 4 letters on the 5 × 5 board.
- In the dictionary. The list has about 115,000 English words in every English spelling, so colour and color both count. Only plain lower-case words are included: no names, abbreviations, hyphens or apostrophes. Slurs are left out.
- Qu. The letter Q always appears as "Qu" on a single die, and counts as two letters. Quit is a four-letter word made from three dice.
- Once each. You can enter a word only once, even if it can be spelled in two places on the board.
Each word is checked as you enter it. If it doesn't count, you're told why.
Finishing early. Press I'm done when you've run out of ideas. You can't add words after that. The round ends early once every player is done.
Scoring
When the round ends, the lists are compared. Any word found by more than one player, computer players included, is struck out and scores nothing. Every other word scores by its length:
| Word length | Points |
|---|---|
| 3 or 4 letters | 1 |
| 5 letters | 2 |
| 6 letters | 3 |
| 7 letters | 5 |
| 8 letters or more | 11 |
Winning
Points from every round are added together. After the last round, the highest total wins. Equal totals share a place.
Table options
| Option | Choices | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Rounds | 1, 3 or 5 | 3 |
| Board | 4 × 4 (3-letter words count), or 5 × 5 (4 letters or more) | 4 × 4 |
| Computer players | Easy, Normal or Hard | Normal |
| Turn timer | Normal, Relaxed (twice as long), Quick (half as long) | Normal |
The turn timer sets the length of a round: three minutes on Normal, six on Relaxed, a minute and a half on Quick. Ranked games seat two to four players and always use the defaults.
On Porchlight
- Drag across the letters with your mouse or finger. Slide back onto the previous letter to remove the last one. Let go to enter the word.
- Or type the word and press Enter. The letters light up on the board as you type.
- Your words and their points are listed beside the board, along with how many words the board contains in all.
After each round, every player's list is shown with shared words struck out, plus the longest words nobody found. Point at any word to light up its path on the board. The next round starts after 25 seconds on a Normal timer, or sooner if everyone presses Ready for the next round.
The host can fill empty seats with computer players. Easy finds about a dozen everyday words of up to five letters, Normal about twenty common words, and Hard about thirty-five, favoring long ones. Play with bots sets up a game against one. If you leave a game of three or more, a computer player takes your seat and you're placed last. Leaving a two-player game forfeits it.
Tips
- Short words are likely to be shared. Longer ones are more likely to be yours alone.
- Try adding endings such as -S, -ED, -ER and -ING to words you've already found.
- Related words count separately: rate, rates, crate and crates are four words.
- On the 5 × 5 board, don't bother with three-letter words. They don't count.