Chain words. Take the middle two letters of the current word — your next word must start with the first and end with the second. Words must be 4+ letters, real, and unused.
basket → knife → knife → itself …
Odd-length word? You choose either middle pair.
Stuck? You carry two leniencies, three charges each:
⇄ FLIP — reverse the pair (start↔end). → SHIFT — step both letters forward in the alphabet (a→b, z→a).
Scoring: 1 point per link, +2 ★ when you satisfy a letter pair you haven't used yet this run. Camping in one corner of the alphabet is safe — exploring pays.
Chain as long as you can. When no word will come, end the run and share your score.
Choggle borrows its engine from John von Neumann's middle-square method of random number generation (1949): square the seed, extract the middle digits, repeat. Here the dictionary does the squaring.