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

was today’s SB co-edited by ned flanders??

Wait when did he started putting the points for QB upfront?

Just noticed that! A change since this morning in the app.

Thanks for confirming. Today looks like another slog through the word pit. Quatermass and the Word Pit.

It is, to me, a bummer that the pangram INVAGINATION is kiboshed

Hmmm the QB point level is not there now, was earlier this morning.

RUGRAT: Not in word list.

AGHARTA: Not in word list

Still at Amazing but at least I got GANACHE

Yeah I got that one too. Could not have gotten galangal without a hint.

i got both of those but will got stuck 13 points from QB :/

I am really amazed today's SB allowed nonce. Given it seems to really sidestep any potentially offensive words.

?

I only think of it as for now / ad hoc / coined, as in "nonce word."

That one has at least 2 common definitions besides the potentially offensive one which I guess is how it’s kept in; the same is true of ones I’ve seen excluded tho, I think it’s quite inconsistent (unsurprisingly). Also nixing INCEL feels vaguely cowardly

Completely different note but I was pleased when OLEIC was allowed today and immediately tried LINOLEIC and LINOLENIC, no dice

I assumed incel wasnt there as its fairly new slang. Though noob is, so who knows.

YENTE ?

an alternative spelling of YENTA? really?

and no GIBBET eh

wishful thinking on sam’s part surely

No DOBBED or GOBBED either.

The one I am most disappointed in not receiving credit for is GOTOBED.

Still weird to me that BOLE is not acceptable.

agreed

I was pleasantly surprised the other day when ANTIFA was accepted!

Now if only antifa could be accepted in more hearts and minds…

OMG at yesterday's FATLY, FITLY, FILIALLY.

from today’s newsletter:

By Sam Ezersky
Greetings, geniuses!

One of the best parts of being an editor for New York Times Games is anticipating that rush of solving excitement from the other side. Like, I just know I’ve stumbled upon a good clue, set of letters or puzzle title, and that you’re in for a treat.

This giddy feeling, of course, stems from my own puzzle-solving delights. Sometimes, I can barely contain myself until publication day!

As such, I highly recommend giving this coming Saturday’s Spelling Bee puzzle a go. It’s one of my favorites yet in the game’s four-year digital history. It’s a doozy.

Every puzzle contains one or more pangrams, which are words that use all seven letters in the Hive. Occasionally, some puzzles will have two or three. Very rarely will you see more than that.

Saturday’s puzzle has … a lot.

How many can you find? Let me and my team know on social!

lol oh god.

I know right?

You know it'd be a lot easier to tell you how many I've found if your stupid UI highlighted the pangrams.

Hm. I got to Genius by myself with 61 words (including all the pangrams) / 304 points before resorting to Forum / hints.

These are some words that I only got because I'd seen them in SB: palapa, pitapat, pipit.

There is no way in hell I would ever have stumbled on papilla without a hint.

Taking a look but I doubt I will match your feat.

You know it'd be a lot easier to tell you how many I've found if your stupid UI highlighted the pangrams.

Yes, thirded.

wanted capicola but was denied

from the write up I thought there’d be more pangrams tbh. Didn’t we do one recently that had more? did manage to get them all without hints

Got 6 so far, dunno if that’s all. They continue to be weird about biology, apoptotic feels like it should be in there (fucking autocorrect recognises it ffs!)

Only got tilapia because of my Stardew Valley obsession.

Re the pangrams not highlightting - just use the SB asssistant browser plug in, it does that. I got 2 pangrams immediately, fuck am I gonna find 6.

I have it installed on my desktop Chrome, but not on my tablet -- it'd be pretty trivial to add it to the base game!

...as soon as I typed that now I just found 2 more haha.

yeah I have been avoiding using the iOS app even though thats how I pay for the damn game, because i cant use it there.

you can see how many pangrams you found just by looking at your word list, though

from the write up I thought there’d be more pangrams tbh. Didn’t we do one recently that had more? did manage to get them all without hints

― Roz, Saturday, July 2, 2022

I think there was one recently with at least as many if not more

SB resets at 5PM each day my time, so I keep getting busy (esp on weekends) after half-doing one and then missing finishing it gah. I got all 6 pngrams but missed a lot of regulr words cos I was busy making dinner and cleaning. Poo.

That is annoying.

It seems wrong to me that aloha is allowed but hola is not.

What kind of flamin galah edits this thing

obviously not duncan idaho

today we are missing PINNACE

I still don't understand how PLAICE is not acceptable. Is it called something else in the US?

trishyb, it isn't called something else but its range is very limited— it only goes as far south as the coast of Rhode Island, and is considered endangered in Canada at that.

in other words, it's not a popular enough fish, it seems.

Still no INCEL, cowards. Yesterday apparently had fucking captcha!