The BOGL Buddy was designed to solve two problems with the Parker Brothers game of Boggle. The first problem is that where you are viewing the boggle board from can give you an advantage or disadvantage over people seeing it from a different angle. The second problem is the timers that come with Boggle are simply bad. I had one time in at just over one minute and a half, the other (I have a few Boggles for testing purposes) timed at just over two minutes.

The Boggle tagline is the “three-minute word game.” I would accept a timer close to three minutes, but two minutes is not three minutes. They’ve inadvertently shortened the game by a third. Another big problem with the sand timers is they do not announce the end of the game. They sit there all out of sand until someone looks up at them.

The solution I developed for the first problem was to rotate the boggle board so that the player at each angle is offered four different views. Each of these lasts 45 seconds. (3 minutes / 4 = 45 seconds).

The second solution is to announce the end of the game in two ways. One is an LED that lights up when time is up, the second is an audible beep. No need to look up. You can Boggle right until the last second.

Method: Arduino, 3D Printing, Electronics