Unfortunately, there is never enough time to cover all the interesting science stories we encounter each month. Previously, we published year-end events reviews. cool science stories we (almost) missed. This year we are experimenting with a monthly collection. October's list includes the microstructural differences between regular spaghetti and gluten-free spaghetti, catching astonishing snakes in action, the mystery of the formation of Martian ravines, and – for all you word game lovers – an intriguing computational proof of how to play the Boggle board with the highest possible score.
Boggle board with the most points
We sometimes receive helpful tips from readers about unusually interesting research projects. Sometimes these projects include classic games such as Bogglein which players find as many words as possible from a 4×4 grid of 16 letter cubes within a given time limit. Software engineer Dan Vanderkam warned us about preprint he posted on arXiv Physics, detailing his search for a Boggle board configuration that would produce the best possible result. It is pictured above and has an overall score of 3625, according to Vanderkam's first-ever computational proof. There are over 1000 possible words, with “replacement” being the longest.
Vanderkam has documented his search and his solution (including the code he used) is detailed in his blog. recognition in the Financial Times that: “As far as I can tell, I am the only person who is really interested in this problem.” This is not entirely true: in 1982, an attempt was made to find the optimal board giving 2195 points. Vanderkam's board was known to be perhaps the most effective, it was just very difficult to prove using standard heuristic search methods. Vanderkam's solution was to group board configurations with similar patterns into classes and then find upper bounds to eliminate clear losers, rather than trying to score each board individually—that is, the old school branch-and-bound method.
