@RCcola1987 - thank you for replying and trying to allay some fears.

I suspect that most folks are going to take a “wait and see” position as things go forward, and you have certainly gotten a sense of how people like sudden change being dropped on them.

As I mentioned, I am looking forward to seeing what new ideas and such you bring forth.  I do not profess to be one of the founding members or even the most passionate QB64 enthusiast, but I enjoy being part of this group, and QB64 has allowed me to rekindle a love for coding I forgot I had. 

Ideally, the transition is seamless, invisible, and for 99% of the population, the new world looks exactly like the old world. 

Welcome aboard, Chief!

@bplus - Dude, you are on FIRE.  Fantastic stuff so quickly!

Boggle was 16 6-sided cubes (each side had a letter) that were scrambled (shaken up) and then settled into a 4x4 grid.  (Or, later, 5x5) The idea was to make as many unique words out of the cubes that were touching each other, using each cube once, before the timer expired.  Longer word = more points.

Unique because if you found it and your opponent did too, nobody got credit for it.

Maybe 3 letters in 6 guesses is too hard, due to the shortness of the word, the number of 3-letter words with common letters, and the overall number of combinations?

5 letters AND being forced to use real words to guess is important, I think, to being able to get to the word in 6 guesses.  I admit I got a Wordle on the 2nd guess the other day, but that was remarkably lucky, I usually get there between 3 and 5 guesses. 

Using openers like STARE, CLOUD and MINTY burn up 14 unique letters - all 6 vowels and most popular consonants in 3 guesses - I feel like, by that point, there is no way you cannot get it by 6 guesses.  Logic plays a huge part in it after that.

Using 3 letter words doesn’t get enough letters out there in the first few guesses to hope to arrive, logically, at the word by the end of 6 guesses, as mentioned by @SMcNeill, especially if the word chosen has a ton of first-letters that go with the last two - ?at, ?ar, ?en…there are loads of those.  It becomes a real roll of the dice.

Maybe 5 letters is the sweet spot between “relying on luck” and “reasonable number of guesses required”?

I did notice, that is how I know you 100% test your programs!  :)

Hey @bplus -

No problem, your Wordle is excellent.  I am not sure I could code anything to allow for the duplicate of letters anytime soon, though I imagine it would simply be a little more recursive comparing (to wit - instead of stopping when you find the character in the word, you have to check each character in a guess to see if it matches each letter in the solution, cannot just stop the search after finding the first instance of E in ELECT if the guess is TRADE).

As for the symbol - well, it is an ankh, an Egyptian symbol that means life.  You see this in hieroglyphics and all sorts of ancient Egyptian symbolism.  How it became MY talisman is a little less exotic - Ultima IV for the Apple II is my favorite video game of all time.  I adopted the ankh, when I bought the original game back in 1985, as my good-luck charm, and have carried it all through my life.  I have the very same one that came with the game, back in ‘85, on a chain that I wear from time to time, and I have a couple of other metal ankhs here and there around the house.

Kinda silly, I know, but Ultima IV, and the ankh, have meant a lot to me in 35 years.  :)

@Dav ...

Game looks great!  Played 2 games, won both, the second one by a large margin.  I am not going to dive into the AI at this time, you must have something going on - it appears that the AI looks for the move with the biggest piece turnover, and takes it, without considering position, especially along the sides.

A couple of things I noticed...

When the game ends and the winner is announced, the score is not updated, the game just moves on to the next game.

Also, sometimes there is a big delay between selecting a piece with the mouse, and the piece becoming "active" and ready to move.

But your game is coming along nicely!  Like the sound effects!

I love the way it’s going, @Dav.  Great job!   I am looking forward to how you tune up the AI.

Do you plan to keep score / records / stats at all?  A way to show if a player is improving?