Spell words before the belt eats them. Rush Hour Boggle is a real-time word game: a five-row grid of letter tiles rides a conveyor belt toward a cliff on the left, and every word you trace buys the board time. Run out of lives and the run is over.
Objective
Score as many points as you can before losing all three lives. You lose a life whenever a column of tiles falls off the cliff with none of its letters used in a word. There is no finish line — the belt speeds up the longer you survive, so every run ends eventually. Your best score is saved in your browser.
Controls
- Desktop: click a tile and drag through neighbouring tiles to spell a word, then release to submit.
- Mobile: touch and drag exactly the same way — the whole game is one-finger tracing.
- Undo mid-trace: drag back onto the previous tile to un-select the last letter.
- A single tap on one tile is treated as a stray touch and ignored — no penalty.
Valid words
- At least 3 letters long.
- Each step of the trace must move to one of the 8 surrounding tiles (up, down, left, right, or diagonal) — classic Boggle adjacency.
- A tile can only be used once per word.
- The word must be in the game's dictionary — roughly 82,000 common English words. No proper nouns, no abbreviations.
Releasing on a word that isn't in the dictionary flashes the tiles red, plays a buzz, and — more painfully — resets your combo multiplier to x1. The letters go back to normal and can be used again.
The Qu tile
As in classic Boggle, Q never appears alone. The Qu tile contributes both letters to your word — trace Qu–I–Z and you've spelled QUIZ. The tile is worth 10 points, and the U it carries counts toward the word's length bonus, so Qu words punch above their tile count.
Scoring
Every word scores (letter values) × (length bonus) × (combo multiplier), rounded to the nearest point.
Letter values follow Scrabble:
| Points | Letters |
|---|---|
| 1 | A E I L N O R S T U |
| 2 | D G |
| 3 | B C M P |
| 4 | F H V W Y |
| 5 | K |
| 8 | J X |
| 10 | Qu Z |
The length bonus rewards longer words steeply (a Qu tile counts as two letters):
| Word length | Multiplier |
|---|---|
| 3 letters | ×1 |
| 4 letters | ×1.5 |
| 5 letters | ×2 |
| 6 letters | ×3 |
| 7 letters | ×4 |
| 8+ letters | ×5 |
The combo multiplier
Valid words chained quickly build a streak. Your first word scores at x1; each consecutive word adds +0.5 to the multiplier, up to a cap of x8. The bar under the multiplier shows the timer: land another valid word within 5 seconds or the streak expires back to x1. Submitting an invalid word kills the streak instantly.
Lives and the cliff
The left edge of the board is a cliff. When a column of five tiles rides off it, the game checks whether any tile in that column was ever part of a valid word (used tiles turn green). If the whole column is untouched, you lose one of your 3 lives. Columns close to the edge pulse with a red border as a warning. When your third life goes, the run ends.
The freeze power-up
Land a valid word containing J, Qu, X, or Z and the belt freezes for 5 seconds. The board tints blue and a countdown appears; use the pause to set up your next word or rescue a column near the edge. Landing another rare-letter word while frozen restarts the 5-second timer.
Belt speed
The belt starts slow and accelerates steadily over the course of a run until it reaches its top speed — roughly four and a half times the starting pace. Early game is for warming up and banking combo words; late game is triage.
Quick summary
- Drag through adjacent tiles to spell words of 3+ letters; release to submit.
- Score = letter values × length bonus × combo multiplier.
- Chain valid words within 5 seconds to grow the combo; invalid words reset it.
- An untouched column falling off the cliff costs a life; you have 3.
- J / Qu / X / Z words freeze the belt for 5 seconds.
- The belt keeps speeding up. High score is saved in your browser.