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

he had good penmanship, he was a good penman.

penman
pĕn′mən
noun

An expert in penmanship. <- this
A copyist; a scribe. <- also this
An author; a writer. <- all of these in fact

Makes sense, but how common is it really? Any citations from the corpus? A corpus?

Honestly I'm on Amazing today and that's the highest rank I've reached in a while--some have been too chewy for me, and other days I haven't had time!

I'm amazed by the speed round ppl but I need to, like, come back to the Bee a few times over the course of the day.

OTM

so i assumed that sam never updates the accepted word list but yesterday by pure chance i discovered that's not the case. you know how nytbee.com tells when same letters were used previously? i check it occasionally because it's interesting to see how changing the centre letter affects the number of words. so i was looking at it yesterday and the previous time the same letters were used it was also the same centre letter L (which also disproves my assumption that it's never repeated).

guess what! it had one less answer. and the answer was PULI

mar 4 2022: https://nytbee.com/Bee_20220304.html
jun 19 2020: https://nytbee.com/Bee_20200619.html

There's an anecdote about how RAFFIA wasn't accepted until someone physically mailed a bunch to a very confused Will Shortz, after which Sam relented for some reason.

The opposite has happened too, where the game no longer accepts words that it once did in the past (e.g. ILIAD).

Forgot my source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/16/crosswords/spellingbee-puzzles.html

haven’t seen that, that answers some questions, thank you!

Two words today that I couldn't really get even with hints

Lots of fun words in this short one

I have the exact opposite feeling! Frustrated at missing just W-7 and JO-6 and have utterly no idea what either could be.

Those were the same two I couldn't get even with hints. Went to one of the popular solvers to ease my mind and get it over with.

got JO-6 by some miracle and JA-7, but didn't even think about the WA-7 slang word

I only knew jo-6 cause I live in AZ

Ohhhhhhh that was enough to job my memory! I've heard of it in the context of facial cleansers. Last one is sure to elude me however.

Did you see Dan's hidden text about it? it's a compound slang word and a hit song

This is interesting because I solved all of today by myself (even the oddities mentioned) but really struggled with Thursday's oddities, which I think were gavotte, gallette, geotag

WAP?

Ah, I got it, thanks!

Okay, in what world is unimmunized not a word?

Thine alabaster cities gleam UNDIMMED by human tears

The Sheik, he drove his Cadillac
He went a-cruisin' down the ville
The MUEZZIN was a-standin'
On the radiator grille

garbage game

Appropriately enough no MIDDEN either.

Was stuck on last word and gave up. Don't think I've ever had last word be such an easy, common word: medium. Hard to feel good about getting all the other words when you miss such an easy one.

Okay, in what world is unimmunized not a word?

― When the Pain That You Feel is the Bite of an Eel, That's a Moray (Old Lunch), Saturday, March 12, 2022 9:22 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

it's irreversible, no?

oops sorry forgot to re-do the hide tag

Had the same reaction, Leee. That was the point where I peaced out.

oh yeah, that one. Me too.

One word completely unknown to me today but managed to construct it from the hint.

Muon is definitely a word, idiots.

I know right!!

Unless it's a bird, Sam doesn't care.

Not even all birds make the cut with Sam - no caracara, no motmot

not allowing yoyo baffled me. Is it because its hyphenated?

Probably

The hoopoe is another rejected bird

Almost got to QB without having to look up the NYT chat column on yesterdays! Had to use them only for one word, so I'm pretty chuffed.

Anyone get QB today? I've got 2 LI words left and wondering if it's worth it to keep trying or of they're too bizarre.

Lol ok now it's 1 word left. How the fuck did I not see linen until now.

Granny, I used to always overlook that word till I forced myself to remember. As for the last word:

If it's an LI8, then it's a compound word
If it's an LI7, then it's a noun derived from an LI5

Good on you guys. I almost never make QB without hints, probably will not happen today.

I've got 5-6 points to go, I'm presuming it's one word. Annoying

I turn to the official hints once I've reached "Amazing" and my progress has halted. (Which is why I knew it was LI words I was missing)

Thanks for the hints Leee! It was the latter one and no way I would've gotten it without your hint. Now gotta file it away for reference.

How come FIEF but no LIEF?

Also would never have gotten LIBELEEE without the hint.

I knew to expect that one from previous Bees.

Actually the last few days have been pretty clean, with relatively few "why this but not that" outrages. Like, MINICAMP but no PAPI is one I remember.

The compounds and baby talk remain a realm of mystery. Like BOOBOO and CANCAN and BOOHOO but not YOYO.

Like all Bee players I have extremely
precise gripes about what gets deemed foreign. Like, if NADA is okay, why not ARRIBA?

On some level it's pointless to belabor these, but the consensus on this thread has generally been that griping is part of the game. Okay