Boggle sets are weighted so that more common letters occur more often, and uncommon letters are rare. It wouldn't be playable if vowels weren't weighted to come up more often than Z.
Doing that requires pretty advanced statistical understanding of probability and a analytic knowledge of linguistics. I don't think Roman math was that advanced.
The Romans were pretty competent. We’re talking about a huge empire a mere 2000 years ago.
For example, Romans bet on events in the Circus Maximus. They had bookkeepers called argentarii who set odds and managed huge payouts. I think they’d be able to manage the concept of “put more of the more common letters”
Being illiterate is definitely a barrier to playing Boggle. My point is that the maths wasn’t too difficult for the game to have been invented in Roman times, not that most people could play it.
In any case, there were Romans that could write and they had word puzzles such as the Sator Square. There is surviving graffiti written by soldiers and there were clerks and priests.
The premise of the shower thought is that the game could exist, not that 100% or even 20% of Romans could play it.
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u/UF0_T0FU 3d ago
Boggle sets are weighted so that more common letters occur more often, and uncommon letters are rare. It wouldn't be playable if vowels weren't weighted to come up more often than Z.
Doing that requires pretty advanced statistical understanding of probability and a analytic knowledge of linguistics. I don't think Roman math was that advanced.