I don't know if that's the official name of this word game, but that's how it was called the first time I played it :-)
I decided to put this on GitHub because I happen to be rewriting this every
now and then, for the sole purpose of showing some people that they can
indeed be replaced with a tiny script cheating at word games when matching
against liberal arts majors 😧
There are two versions of the program, but essentially, they work the same way: you give them a 4x4 or 5x5 letter matrix as input on the command line, and they output a list of words that can be made from the matrix.
Words are valid if they can be made by following a path of consecutive letters. Paths can go in any possible direction (horizontal, vertical, diagonal). A path cannot use twice the same matrix position. If you want to make a word using twice the same letter, the letter has to be in the matrix multiple times.
To run it:
#. Make sure that you have /usr/share/dict/words (or install it, or change
the path in the code).
#. Start the program by specifying the letter matrix on the command-line,
e.g. python boggle5.py foqsleisoptiwosbzlqpgoerg.
The output of boggle5 and boggle4 are different; boggle4 also shows you how to trace the word.