Board Game Twofer: Boggle Master & Inner Cirlce

Surprised it took us this long to get around to playing some of the older games during the disease-times, but here we are. 

The Game(s): Boggle Master & Inner Circle
The Publisher(s): Parker Brothers & Milton Bradley, respectively
Time: 3 minutes for a round of Boggle, maybe 5-10 for a game of Inner Circle
Players: Me and Michelle

Game Play: Boggle Master is pretty well-known. You've got a clear plastic lid over a 5x5 grid and a bunch of plastic letters. You shake 'em up, settle them so they're laying flat, pull off the lid, and now you've got 3 minutes to make all the words you can (minimum 4 letters). Every word with 4 letters is a point, 5 letters is two points, and so on up, but they only count if your opponent didn't come up with them, so it's a race to get both the obvious words to block your opponents and the non-obvious ones to get some points. 

Alphabet waffle, as opposed to alphabet soup

Inner Circle, meanwhile, as a game I hadn't played before. This one consists of a hexagonal plastic base, in which fit four cardboard inserts, each a little smaller than the last. Players start by alternately putting down the little plastic thingies around the outer edge.

A-like so

Each spot has 1-4 dots on it, and once all the thingies are placed, you alternate moving them. But the hitch is, you can only move them a) in a straight line, b) a number of spaces equal to the dots the thingie is one, and c) you can't pick them up to check. If you screw up and pick one up that you can't legally move, fuck you, miss a turn. You're trying to get them to land on the spots with holes to the next level (teal in the above picture)...

...at which point that section is lifted off, leaving behind only the thingies that got to the safe spaces, and the movements begin again. The last section only has one "safe" space, so whoever lands on that is the winner!

Opinions: I like both of these games, but I like Inner Circle more as a board game. Boggle, damn my digital-age eyes, feels like it makes more sense as an app-based video game, while Inner Circle has fiddly bits that actually justify a physical board game (not that you couldn't do it in an app, but it's fun to move the little thingies around). 

Boggle is fine, but it's one of many word games I own and if I'm playing one at a table, there are others I like better. 

Keep? Boggle Master no, Inner Circle yes