Tomtit in the tilth -- the NY TIMES SPELLING BEE thread

I'm sure I have loads, but the one I can currently think of is DITTO, hence the mnemonic I posted upthread.

feign and deign a couple of days ago were impossible for me

got a few semi-obscure words today but couldn’t get lantana

he's that guy who does the youtube record review, right?

Pretty easy QB today which was a relief after yesterday although not accepting wiggity is wack.

Yes, got to QB for the first time

the hardest word for me today was a common four-letter word, I just couldn’t think of it

I was surprised they accepted wiggy

got QB today too ^_^

came upon wight just by accident, don’t think I’ve ever heard it used in a sentence except on Game of Thrones

Sigh, add THIGH to the list of common words I always overlook (and which was the one word I missed yesterday).

Loanwords beef: NADA is a frequent answer (and I think that we've seen FINITO before), but not HOLA (meanwhile, ALOHA is accepted).

I agree with you, but it is worth noting that ALOHA is an enormously common word of a US colony, whereas HOLA is...well, not.

Well, Hawaii is a state, but then what about NADA and FINITO? We borrowed those straight from Spanish, and furthermore, HOLA is extremely common in several American states too.

Yeah, I mean, I agree. I was just thinking about possible reasons!

Another note: ALOHA, NADA, and FINITO are all valid words in Scrabble. HOLA is not.

the pangram hasn't usually been the hardest word for me to get, but today it was

i have a whole ran abt this ill prob unleash itt but compound word pangrams (like today’s) are super annoying and unsatisfying

I think I've found at least one other compound word pangram made of two 4-letter words in the last couple of weeks, but can't think of what it was at the moment. I liked expanding plane to biplane, and also discovering the suffix -ize to expand demon to demonize and demonized

xps

I think there is some validity to the argument that NADA and maybe even FINITO are words that an American English speaker might use as slang, without feeling like they are borrowing a word from Spanish. HOLA might be just as likely as those to be used by an English speaker, but I think said speaker would be more likely to feel like they are using a Spanish word for effect. It is admittedly a slim distinction but I think I can grasp their rationale. Not sure where ALOHA fits into that - it seems to be sort of in the middle of that scale, with the caveat that a lot of Americans might use it without even being able to identify it as being from another language (thinking it's just Hawaiian slang).

it feels slightly diminishing to even think along these lines and it’s a failing of the game imo. not saying i know how to fix it. the crossword has worked out a way to include proper names, foreign words, slang mottos like BALLISLIFE and more while also maintaining a famously rigorous clue style that allows for very precise solving. it’s hard to discern a personality behind spelling bee. its dead ends don’t describe the outline of anything in particular. “is it american” is one of the least interesting things i can imagine a puzzle forcing me to think about.

i agree with all that, i guess that's why I don't think Spelling Bee is really in the same ballpark as crosswords

The itch that SB scratches that the crossword doesn't is that iterative variation thing where you're going through -ED or -ING words. I don't need a personality from it (though complaining about the omissions/inclusions is now part of the appeal, not to mention the culture), and the anagramming itself is extremely fulfilling -- and if I'm being pretentious (and wrong), it makes me feel like I'm Nabokov.

I will say, though, that after some days that are a slog, and seeing my score at 0 with the new day's letters feels like an endless ratrace.

As always with any puzzle or game of this nature the gatekeeping around what is omitted is where it falls down

It should wear this role as lightly as possible given the frankly nonsensical words it does allow through

I think that it is getting the mix badly wrong myself tbh

for the most part when the puzzle doesn't accept a word I'm content to move on. agree with Leee about the anagram aspect of it being fulfilling

same but how is FIEF not acceptable i ask you

the lack of footprints to trace back good days and bad is not a feature it's a bug

fief was accepted! I was surprised by that

ALOHA, HOLA and FINITO all seem fine to me but the other day MAHATMA was the only word i was missing to get queen bee and that annoyed me

it didn't take fief for me!

My mistake, it took it.
But not FIENDING?

I was also annoyed that it didn't take FIENDING

same

Hoo boy, the pangram today...

i was gonna say, this is the first time i got genius and THEN got the pangram

meanwhile we're not taking NONCONJOINING, which is a perfectly common enough term that i have used when booking hotel rooms (i haven't really but let's pretend)

i wasn’t surprised it didn’t take GIGGING

https://bullyusa.com/frog-gigging.html

this species of bird junco and this plural of a word I had already found jinni were the ones I couldn't think of today

same!

there were some words I never would have thought of today Tori, the plural of torus, and tortoni - a dessert featuring frozen sweetened condensed milk, whipped cream, coconut maroon crumbs, slivered almonds and chopped maraschino cherries?

Also torii, the gate of a Shinto shrine, I know what it stands for but haven’t ever seen the word beforelink

EFFABLE isn't accepted today (being the antonym to INEFFABLE, not something cruder), but that just makes me wonder what the threshold is for words to be accepted. I have a strong feeling that it's just what Sam arbitrarily decides (see: that one time COPE wasn't accepted).

here’s the autoreply they send when u email them

Thanks for solving and taking the time to offer us a word suggestion today!

Every Spelling Bee puzzle is hand-curated to focus on relatively common words, with a couple of tough ones here and there to keep it challenging. We occasionally miss words, and always appreciate our solvers letting us know. As a reminder, proper names and words that contain hyphens or apostrophes are not part of our word list.

In fairness to our wide-ranging audience, Spelling Bee generally avoids terms that are hyper-specific to any background or professional field, such as terms that might be familiar to, say, a physician or geologist, but not people outside of that area of expertise. We also do our best to ensure that any inappropriate or offensive terms will be omitted.

We welcome your feedback, and this inbox is monitored to take all relevant and appropriate suggestions into consideration, but we are unable to respond to individual inquiries.

If you have any questions unrelated to a word suggestion, want to share an experience or need assistance with any of our other puzzles, please reach out to us at our Games Care email address: nytga✧✧✧@nyti✧✧✧.c✧✧. You can also follow our editor Sam Ezersky for additional Spelling Bee updates and discussion.

Best,

The New York Times Games Team

So HABOOB and NENE are known to non-specialists. Okay.

:) I like the word haboob!

Yeah the specialist line is nonsense tbf but lookit the fun is in the try

today I was surprised that they didn't accept the word billable, tried it a couple of times to make sure, but let it go

oh wait, they did accept it! sorry

two words I couldn’t get today both ended in double vowels bailee, libelee - which is a future reminder

also surprised the puzzle today also accepted an anatomical word and two related words, one entirely linguistic and the other both anatomical and linguistic

I'm finding Sunday's really hard! I just can't get my mind around these letters.

It is hard but interesting. There a 5 compound words, involving back, bar, book, room, rack, mark, and comb, but also a lot of lesser-used words

I meant the day before that one. :)

my ipad is 8yo and the app no longer works, so now i have to do the games on safari. it's not *that* different, just a bit awkward here and there, but nevertheless my results have trended toiletwards

anyway not so sure about AARGH but not ARGH on sunday

how is CONCOMITANT not accepted today??

Agreed. Oh, Sam.

Also mission monotonic which I'm almost sure has been in the Bee before.

DR i JUST came here to post that

i've certainly heard that word more than at least one of the other pangrams today!

it’s a very normal word!!

first word i tried, although i misspelled it a few times

I have a strong suspicion that today isn't the first time Sam hasn't accepted placable.

a language game that doesn't recognise TROCHAIC as a valid answer, okay

Burgoo is one for the callaloo / colcannon files

I kinda want to make a vegetarian version of it!

You could have it in a palapa

irrationally angry at CANNABINOL not being accepted today (and it would be a pangram too)

Today’s pangram gave me a chuckle

some weird-ass words today

how is that PG not a proper noun??

I didn't get either pangram until the hints, and one of them was a word I've maybe heard of or encountered in reading maybe only once of twice before

I suspect today is going to set a record for the highest percentage of "words people are going to complain about" relative to the total number of words.

Another special occasion today??

haha i was embarrassingly far into it before i registered the S

My subscription ended the other day and I’m reduced to getting my Spelling Bee fix from inferior copies

You must feel like Moses dying just before reading the promised land.

getting an S and then having words like SKUAS become SB fare feels a bit like the monkey’s paw curling

Almost as annoying as when Sam seems a word unsuitable is when he does so with a word that used to be accepted, like today's puzzle which doesn't accept tontine, which I was so proud of myself for remembering.