Bloglingual

Bloglingual

  • The Definitive Word Game Tier List: From Daily Rituals to Brain Busting Bangerz

    Language is beautiful. I once saw a “would you rather” game between being a master at all the instruments or being proficient at all spoken and written languages (yes I know music can be considered a language but bare with me); I’m picking being proficient at all the spoken and written languages 99% of the time. There’s a miniscule part of me that still wants to be in the greatest midwest emo band however. Anyways, language brings us together, and I’m pretty sure since the beginning of written language, word games have always existed.

    As we navigate the first quarter of 2026, the landscape of word games has shifted. We’ve moved on from crosswords in the Sunday paper and whatever they played since the dawn of written language into an era of digital social puzzles. Your choice of word game says a lot about your personality: are you a tongue tyke, lingo king, or even God’s silver tongue personified?

    To settle the score, I’ve compiled the definitive Word Games Tier List. This ranking is based on mechanical depth, user experience, and that elusive “just one more round” factor just like Civilization. Like all tier lists, we’ll start from the bottom and make our way to the vocab champs in the S-Tier. 

    F-Tier: The New York Times (0)

    Honestly every single word game that I have to pay for. I’m looking at you, New York Times. Word games are a human right. I’m on the phone with my senator at this moment to get the right to play all word games free of charge added as the 28th amendment. If you subscribed to the New York Times to play word games, then you are a language loser.

    Contexto

    It’s honestly a cool concept in theory. You enter a word and the “algorithm” spits out how close you are to the actual word. I say cool in concept because the website uses AI to let you know how close you are. When I played, the hidden word was OPAL. So please tell me how RECTANGLE is closer than SPHERE. I gave up. This game does not work or maybe I’m just too smooth brained?

    D-Tier: Tutorial Island (1)

    You leave ‘em for better word games after second grade.

    Classic Word Search

    Let’s be honest: once you’ve found “WATER” diagonally and backwards, you’ve reached master prestige and seen it all. Word searches were passed out when teachers had nothing to do. Looking back, they may have been recovering from a hangover and needed us to shut up.

    Hangman

    Another classic we’ve all seen in the classroom. It’s fun in the first grade when everyone was yelling their answer after only two letters on the board.

    Anagrams

    My first introduction to Anagrams was in the second grade and we had to make words out of THANKSGIVING. My seven year old mind did not comprehend the rules and was only able to make out THANKS and GIVING. Anagrams should honestly be 8+ due to the difficulty. Ultimately, it’s lowkey a demake of Scrabble. Pressing the shuffle button on digital versions of anagrams can sometimes feel like gambling, so that’s cool I guess? 

    C-Tier: Filthy Casuals (2)

    Manufactured for mass pleasure just like KPOP.

    Wordle

    You gotta be kidding me man. It’s a hangman reskin. One five letter word. This provides no sustenance to learning minds. It’s an insult to vocabulary. It’s more of a guessing game than a word game. The game has already been optimized; it might not even be a word, might even be a math game. Now I’ll admit there is a “just one more round” factor, but The New York Times hides it behind a paywall. Wordle would’ve been B-Tier if it weren’t for capitalistic greed. I am firm but fair, so Wordle gets to be at C-Tier. This game STANK.

    B-Tier: Good but Greedy (3)

    When the game is good but some corporation has to get their bread.

    Strands

    It’s honestly the next step in the evolution of classic word search. In one of my earlier blogs I said crosswords were Word Search 2. I take that back, Strands is the true successor. Strands provides players with a measly hint and they have to find them in a classic word search grid. The twist is you can move adjacently, just like Minesweeper! It would’ve been placed higher, but New York Times’ greed sickens me. At least I got to play a game for free lol

    Scrabble and Words with Friends

    Scrabble and Words with Friends built the foundations of the mobile word game industry. Zynga had us by the  _ALLS (quick hangman puzzle) on Facebook. These games casinofied classic Scrabble and connected us all. I’m just done with the aggressive ad placements and constant prompts to buy coins.

    A-Tier: Genius Adjacent (4)

    For when you have 15 minutes to kill and point to prove or taking stuck on the “throne”

    Crosswords

    Now this is the classic. I’ll be the first to admit, it didn’t transition well to the digital age, but that’s okay. It’s stood the test of time. We all thought we were done with word games in the second grade, but then they reappeared in our Spanish 1 class. This game is perfect for vocabulary building. Besides Sunday newspapers and clases de español, you can also find them in dollar stores. I’m sure you’ll be playing crosswords again at an old folks home.

    Boggle and Boxlingual

    Everybody says they got hooked on word games through Words with Friends and Wordle. Nah, Boggle is the game that got me hooked. It’s like Minesweeper but for words. You clear the field to find bombs (words). It’s extremely competitive among individuals with a hyperfixation of words. Unfortunately Boggle is a physical board game. Fortunately for you, Boxlingual provides users with a faithful recreation of Super Big Boggle with an altered scoring system. The best thing is you can play an unlimited amount of times. Check it out (now with dark mode)!

    S-Tier: God Among Men (5)

    The next generation of word games.

    Boxlingual: Themed

    Themelingual is the definitive word game that defined 2026. It combines the best of learning, Boggle, and crosswords. A 6×6 grid with hints like cross words and references to pop culture. What more can you ask for? Did you know challenges are released weekly? Check it out!

    Where do you stand on the lingo ladder?

    Pick your favorite three word games from the list and add them up to see where you stand. The points you should add are next to the tier.

    • <4 : Language Loser – Smooth brained corrupted by greed
    • 4-5: Tongue Tyke – You are still in the second grade
    • 6-7: Coinage Connoisseur – Stuck in the pass, but your taste does not disappoint
    • 8-9: Lingo King – In it with current trends, you’re gucci
    • >9: God’s Silver Tongue Personified – Oracle of word games

    Final Verdict

    If you are looking to start your word game journey or scored less than three, start in the C-Tier with Wordle. There’s a reason millions play and why the creator got bought out by The New York Times. It’s simple and digestible, the perfect linguistic appetizer. If you find yourself breezing through the daily puzzles and using an algorithm to solve the daily puzzle, don’t be afraid to dip your toes into games farther up the tier list like Boxlingual or Strands.

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  • Weekly Themed Game Mode Out Now!

    Word searches are the OG word games. We all remember playing them in elementary school with vocabulary words. Once children mastered the backwards diagonals, teens moved onto crosswords, or I would like to say: Word Search 2. 

    There hasn’t been a huge evolution in word search games yet. The closest we have is Word Search 2.25, Wordle. I’m going to be real, Wordle is not fun. There are no hints, words are only five letters long, and you can only play once a day. There is no soul and love in that game. On second thought, Wordle is Word Search .75. It’s honestly a step back. You might as well play the OG word search still. I still can’t believe we got sucked into that game during the pandemic.

    Fear not word gamers, I have found the next step in word search games. We are now introducing a themed mode to Boxlingual. Boxlingual’s weekly themed modes combine the OG word search with cross words and classic Boxlingual. Players select a theme and have to find words related to the theme. Users can view the length of the words by checking the amount of question marks in the hint/definition section. Definitions and hints can range anywhere from classic dictionary definitions, fill in the blanks, and references to memes and pop culture.

    I have released six initial themes:

    I encourage users to check the themed mode and highly recommend the Pixar challenge for beginners. Each word was handpicked, boards painstakingly created, and definitions made to be fun. It seriously takes time to create each theme, so please check out Boxlingual’s new themed mode!

    Here’s how I make them:

    First we gotta start off with a certain theme. I pick things I am knowledgeable about. Let’s go with Pokemon for example since I already made that one. Next I pick a subcategory. I got a suggestion to do Pokemon, but to make this mode fun for everybody I had to think what aspect of Pokemon are people most familiar with. Pokemon peaked in the 90s and early 2000’s with generation one and generation two. The first generation is what people are most familiar with. 

    Next I had to think of words or pokemon related to the first generation of pokemon. I also have to keep into account the length of each word. I’ll write down a bunch of words that have similar letters and put them into a list. Hint when you play the pokemon mode: I looked up a list of the original 151 pokemon for inspiration.

    Now this is the hard part. I literally go into Excel and create a 6×6 grid. I start off with the longest word and add words utilizing the same letters. From my experience I’ll fit around 10 words into a 6×6 grid. I’ll then review the map and ensure all words can actually be played. Now that the hard part is over, it’s time to work on the fun part. The fun part is creating the definitions and hints for users. Since I know a ton about pokemon, I looked through my brain and referenced memes as well as the pokedex. Here’s the sad part now. I won’t ever get to play the themed maps since I know all the answers. I would love to play other people’s maps. Maybe in the future Boxlingual will be released on Steam and have its own workshop.

    For now, if you have suggestions or would like to submit your own theme, please email me your map, words, and definitions to <kalinawansoftware@gmail.com>. I will review and play your map for content control, and your map may be selected for posting. Keep coming back to Boxlingual (at least every week) for a new theme. Users can always go back to our archive. Play with your friends (or alone) and see if you/y’all could find all the words!

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  • Boxlingual’s Humble Beginnings

    Boggle is arguably the most fun word game out there. I fell in love with the game after playing the game at family events with my cousins, aunties, and uncles. It is now a right of passage to be accepted in my family. Every time one of the cousins brings a significant other to a family event, the significant other is “encouraged” to play Boggle with aunties and uncles to prove their intellect.

    We don’t play with the standard 3+ letter word rule; we actually play with a minimum of 5 letters to keep players thinking. Another twist is we don’t use the letter “S” at the end of words for plural and present tense conjugation. It would be way too easy to double dip words and to make 4 letter words reach the 5 letter minimum.

    I would always lose when playing boggle with the bright minds of my family, so I had to bend the rules a bit. They admire the use of intellectual words such as “sonar” and “lunar”, and look down on words such as “tooter.” I’d find myself using low level words to gain easy points and they would just roll their eyes. Another method I used was using slang. Words the uncs would not think of like “gucci.” Whenever a slang word was played, I would have to defend against the senate (they would almost always allow me to play these words because I was one of the weakest players).

    I only won one time. I cheated. I took a picture of the boggle board, snuck out of the table because I said there were too many people, and entered the letters into a Boggle solver at a seclusive location. Quickly I jotted down words like crazy, but I also made them believable. No fancy schmancy chemical formulas and overlyscientific words that I would not know. After five minutes, I went back to the main table and showed everyone off. They were impressed. We played another round and I didn’t cheat because I felt bad. I promptly lost and everybody called my last win as a fluke. From that day I wanted to become better at the game as I only played with my family.

    I don’t own Super Big Boggle so I created my own version, Boxlingual. Boxlingual is a faithful recreation of Super Big Boggle, down to the dice and letters being used. This way I could practice by myself. The scoring and ruling system had been reworked from my family’s house rules. Three letter words are now allowed for more fun, but to encourage users to think more, points are awarded at an exponential rate. I’ve seen players score 3,000+ points in some games. The rules are more relaxed as past and present tense words simply ending with an “s” are also allowed. Boxlingual is dedicated to my family of hardcore Boggle gamers. Thank you everyone for checking Boxlingual out and supporting my game!

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