Baffleword - A Boggle Word Game Parody

Baffleword is a single-player, parody clone of the classic Boggle® dice word game — an independent, unofficial homage built for fun and learning. You shake up a grid of letter dice and race the clock to trace as many words as you can across adjacent tiles. It's a polished cross-platform desktop game built with .NET 10 and Avalonia, featuring three game modes, MVVM architecture, drag-to-select, achievements, and persistent high scores.

Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Hasbro. Boggle® is a registered trademark of Hasbro, Inc. Baffleword is a fan-made parody and is neither produced nor approved by the trademark owner. See Disclaimer.

See it play

Trace a word	Finish the round
Click and drag across adjacent tiles — the path is drawn as you go and the word builds live beneath the board	Every round ends with a full breakdown: score, words found, board completion, longest word, and any achievements you just unlocked

Features

• Three game modes - Standard (4x4), Big Board (5x5), and Super Board (6x6 with blocked tiles and digraph dice)
• Drag-to-select - Click and drag across adjacent tiles to form words
• NWL2020 dictionary - 191,745 words from the official North American Scrabble tournament word list, with Trie-based prefix and full-word lookups
• Board solver - Finds all possible words on any board via DFS traversal
• High scores - Persistent SQLite leaderboard with top 50 scores per game mode
• 26 achievements - Unlock milestones across all three game modes
• Audio system - Cross-platform SoundFlow backend for sound effects and background music
• Pause/resume - Pause mid-round without losing progress
• Settings - Adjustable SFX and music volume with mute toggle

Game Modes

Mode	Grid	Min Word Length	Timer	Notes
Standard	4x4	3 letters	3 min	Classic letter-grid play
Big Board	5x5	4 letters	3 min	Larger grid, longer words
Super Board	6x6	4 letters	4 min	Blocked tiles, digraph dice

Big Board (5x5)	Super Board (6x6)
Twenty-five dice and a four-letter minimum push you toward longer words	Thirty-six dice, digraph tiles like TH, and 2-points-per-letter scoring on 9+ letter words

Screens

Main menu	How to play

Pause	Settings

High scores	Achievements

Scoring

Standard & Big Board

Word Length	Points
3–4 letters	1
5 letters	2
6 letters	3
7 letters	5
8+ letters	11

Super Board

Word Length	Points
4 letters	1
5 letters	2
6 letters	3
7 letters	5
8 letters	11
9+ letters	2 per letter

Prerequisites

• .NET 10 SDK (10.0.200+)
• Linux, macOS, or Windows 10/11

Build & Run

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/RandyNorthrup/baffleword.git
cd baffleword

# Build
dotnet build

# Run
dotnet run --project src/Baffleword.App

# Create a self-contained Linux x64 build
dotnet publish src/Baffleword.App/Baffleword.App.csproj --configuration Release --runtime linux-x64 --self-contained true --output ./publish/linux-x64

# Create a self-contained Windows x64 build for installer packaging
dotnet publish src/Baffleword.App/Baffleword.App.csproj --configuration Release --runtime win-x64 --self-contained true --output ./publish/win-x64

Tagged releases build a signed Windows installer with Velopack plus self-contained Linux and macOS archives. Push a tag like v1.5.7; the release workflow uploads the generated artifacts for all platforms.

Required repository secrets for release signing:

• WINDOWS_SIGNING_CERTIFICATE_BASE64 — base64-encoded .pfx certificate
• WINDOWS_SIGNING_CERTIFICATE_PASSWORD — certificate password

Run Tests

dotnet test

Tests run across 4 test projects:

• Baffleword.Core.Tests — Game engine, board generation, scoring, dictionary, achievements, statistics
• Baffleword.App.Tests — ViewModels, navigation, paths, commands
• Baffleword.Data.Tests — SQLite repositories, settings persistence
• Baffleword.Audio.Tests — Audio manager interface tests

Project Structure

src/
  Baffleword.Core/       Core game logic, models, services, dictionary
  Baffleword.App/        Avalonia application, views, view models, themes
  Baffleword.Data/       SQLite data layer, repositories
  Baffleword.Audio/      Cross-platform audio system
tests/
  Baffleword.Core.Tests/
  Baffleword.App.Tests/
  Baffleword.Data.Tests/
  Baffleword.Audio.Tests/
docs/
  assets/                README screenshots

Architecture

• MVVM — ViewModelBase with INotifyPropertyChanged, RelayCommand, implicit DataTemplates
• DI — Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection for all services and ViewModels
• Navigation — NavigationService resolves ViewModels from DI, ContentControl-based view switching
• Data — SQLite via Microsoft.Data.Sqlite for high scores, achievements, statistics, settings; user data and logs live under the platform local application-data folder
• Dictionary — Trie data structure loaded from embedded NWL2020 word list resource
• Audio — SoundFlow-backed ISoundEffectPlayer and IMusicPlayer implementations

Tech Stack

• .NET 10 / C# 14
• Avalonia UI
• SQLite (Microsoft.Data.Sqlite)
• SoundFlow audio playback
• Velopack Windows installer packaging
• xUnit + Moq + FluentAssertions (testing)
• StyleCop + SonarAnalyzer + .NET Analyzers (code quality)

Disclaimer

Baffleword is an independent, fan-made parody clone of the dice word game commonly known as Boggle®. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or connected to Hasbro, Inc. in any way. "Boggle" is a registered trademark of Hasbro, Inc.; any reference to it here is purely descriptive and nominative, used to identify the genre of game this project parodies. All Baffleword names, branding, code, dice configurations, and assets are original to this project. No Boggle artwork, logos, or proprietary materials are used. If you own intellectual property you believe is misused here, please open an issue.

License

MIT

Support this project

If this project saves you time, you can buy me a coffee via PayPal. Thank you!