The Elggob board consists of a grid of letters, randomly arranged. Your job as the Elggob player is to find among these letters large quantities of high-quality words. Following is a more detailed explanation.

To begin, select a difficulty level and a time limit (or select "No Limit" if no time limit is desired). Press the "Play" button to display the word grid and begin the countdown timer.

Enter words in the text box, making sure to separate each word with a return or space. Words formed must comply with the following rules:

1. Adjacent letters in a word must be adjacent on the board, be it vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. There is no "hopping" about the board to form words; likewise a word is invalid if all the letters of the word touch, but not in any particular order.
2. Each letter in the grid may be used only once in any given word. If any letter appears more than once in the grid, each may be used in turn in the same word, but no word can ever use the same letter in the same place twice.
3. Capitalized words, hyphenated words, abbreviations, acronymns, and so forth are not valid words. The Elggob dictionary is the final judge of words in this regard; however, feel free to give feedback if you consider that a beloved word of yours has gone unheeded needlessly.

When the countdown time expires, or when you press the "Submit words" button, Elggob will display your words along with the computer's list. Words are evaluated and appear color-coded as follows:

Word code	Explanation
1. word	Credited word. The word itself is a link to a definition courtesy of www.dictionary.com. Points are awarded as follows: 3 letters: 1 point 4 letters: 1 point 5 letters: 2 points 6 letters: 3 points 7 letters: 5 points 8 or more letters: 11 points
2. word	Cancelled word. This word also appears on the opponent's list and therefore earns points for neither player.
3. word	Not a possible combination. The word cannot be formed on the current Elggob board. (See above rules on valid word formation.) No points.
4. word	Word not found in the Elggob dictionary. No points.
	All words under three letters are ignored by Elggob.

A final caution (or consolation) regarding difficulty levels. Due to the structure of the game, there is actually no way to earn more than zero points if you choose the highest difficulty level. In other words, you will indeed be humbled. However, if you want to see how many of the computer's words you can take out in the process, by all means, give it a try. It might even be fun. You have, however, been warned.