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

as far as puzzles go, I'm getting much better at the NYT hard sudoku and the LAT expert sudoku. The LAT impossible sudoku is still a challenge, because it requires visualiziing multiple moves in advance to solve it

I've been doing the NYT hard sudoku too! I think today's will stymie me though.

I got QB today, which is much more tractable than yesterday's, even though 2-4 of the words imo stretch the definition of common.

I feel like a DUNCE for falling one word short of yesterday's QB.

When you get to QB, does it change from Genius so you know? Because it seems unlikely I will get to that point and see it in person.

i think it’s the first time i got to genius without discovering a single 4 letter

xp yep a little graphic screen and everything

Nice! Something to strive for

QB status mostly eludes me. I usually do these in the morning. I get to Genius and stop. By the next morning I forget where my mind was, what avenues I'd pursued, and what I'd tried and hadn't tried, so seeing the answers the next day isn't very illuminating.

An exception: a few days ago I was already at Genius trying to get to Queen Bee. I think I saw, but didn't try, "ladyland". Turns out the word I was missing was the rather more pedestrian "landlady." Reader, I kicked myself.

electric landlady

lodger? i ardly even knew er

Yesterday's omissions included DETUNE and DETUNED which I thought was weird

They also omitted UNCEDED and I thought they might do something good and include it next time so I wrote them asking them to do so

yeah not accepting UNCEDED is pretty ridiculous
DETUNE/DETUNED also (esp considering UNTUNED was accepted) but it’s one of those commonly used but not formally defined tech terms maybe

xp i was pretty disappointed getting QB was just the same screen you get for genius, was hoping for fireworks or something

also missing yesterday were unindicted and untended

Yesterday had FALAFEL and FLAUTA but not TEFF or FUFU, which are staple foods in Africa.

But how many US citizens know what a falafel is versus what injera is? I mean, I get your point, but they sell glorified flautas at 7-11.

teff was a v weird omission imo

For some perverse reason I thought "tuff" would work.

So. There are areas where Sam is decently conversant and others where he isn't. Birds yes, geology no. Foods kinda. Graphic design and book production no, but jocular loanwords (caca, nada, primo) yes.

chica but no mami iirc

Right, and mama but not dada.

Instead of getting incensed I find it kind of fascinating. As noted above, I am 1000% certain that my own vocabulary is full of blind spots and inconsistencies. But then, I don't have my idiosyncratic judg(e)ments paraded in front of the sentient world by the New York Fucking Times. Which is as it should be.

Would it be better or worse to have a committee, something like Merriam-Webster's usage panel? Possibly worse. As we've found, committees have blind spots too. Would it be better or worse to still have one person, but instead it's a different person? Like, say, Bryan Garner or James McBride or Gretchen McCullough. Or, for that matter, Will "Eat My" Shortz.

For everyone who found Garner too prescriptive you'd have someone who found McCullough too lenient.

So I keep coming back to: might as well be Sam (for all my gripes)

one person, but instead it's a different person

^ this

food is where the arbitrariness of including some obscure words but not others is most obvious imo

getting really good at italian and indian food names though!

Hes a disaster imo, its the inclusion of absolutely obscure specialist jargon as and when suits him and the omission of perfectly valid but rare words besides

I hate him

Then go do a different free fun thing maybe?

Just a thpught

*thought

no we're through the looking glass, ymp, locked in an embrace of hate, entwined in a spiral down that last endless staircase

Ok

Enjoy

Meanwhile I feel like there a whole lot of other entertainment options on offer and you could just, y'know, go do those things

Or not

Whatevs

but it's such a good game. its current steward is simply for the birds. specifically, the nene

Watch Sam whip

Watch Sam nene

If I ever see a nene in the wild I will divide it up into 4 parts and package them in 4 boxes and send all of them to Sam by special post.

It is thought that the nene evolved from the Canada goose (Branta canadensis), which most likely arrived on the Hawaiian islands about 500,000 years ago, shortly after the island of Hawaiʻi was formed. This ancestor is the progenitor of the nene as well as the prehistoric giant Hawaiʻi goose (Branta rhuax)[5] and nēnē-nui (Branta hylobadistes). The nēnē-nui was larger than the nene, varied from flightless to flighted depending on the individual, and inhabited the island of Maui. Similar fossil geese found on Oʻahu and Kauaʻi may be of the same species. The giant Hawaiʻi goose was restricted to the island of Hawaiʻi and measured 1.2 m (3.9 ft) in length with a mass of 8.6 kg (19 lb), making it more than four times larger than the nene.

o__O

Its not free, that's for starters

The fun is locked in with the hate, that's additional

My posts are free btw, you could read other ones by the same token

I don't mind the quirks, it's part of the fun. today I got dammit, which surprised me

quirks are fine, it’s the inconsistency that irks
nene is fine, pudu, not so much

a few weeks ago there was a perfectly reasonable word it didn’t accept which also happened to be a pangram, that was esp annoying

pudu? I've never seen that word before

It's just a game determined by someone else's rules, I still like playing it

lol people who enjoy this game are also people who are more likely to complain about the rules applied inconsistently
but yeah that’s kinda part of the charm i suppose

i’m just curious how the process works, the word list must be generated automatically and then vetoed

I just subscribed to the Sunday NYT a few weeks ago, so only recently have I been enjoying full access to Spelling Bee. And I took Twitter off my phone, so it's my new thing I look at while I'm bored during the day. (Although ironically, people posting Spelling Bee screenshots on Twitter is what made me interested in it in the first place.)

husband got me hooked up a few weeks ago and comparing words at the end of the day is something we both look forward to now

the paper version actually is edited by someone else but i haven’t played it enough to sense their quiddities

What about their agonies?

I only play the free one someone linked to upthread and my 'thing' is to get within about 20 words or so and want to burst with frustration so I look at the spoilers. Frequently screaming at what's allowed and what isn't - does seem part of the whole experience!

hate-solving, if you will

Yeah this is not imo big deal stuff its ok to hate the puzzle setter when the puzzle solution becomes subjective im sorry if hes anybodys cousin but its valid for the thread

Xp to scanner darkly - same here. Kept hearing "Genius! Yes!" and got intrigued.

I left a LOT of SB staples on the table yesterday, the most egregious of which were probably CACAO and COCOA.

Feel like there's always a short word in plain sight that I miss, even when I get a couple of pangrams. Yesterday I had DIATOMIC and MACADAMIA but missed AMID.

i had DIATOMIC and missed DIATOM lol

I left a LOT of SB staples on the table yesterday, the most egregious of which were probably CACAO and COCOA.

― Leee Tigre (Leee), Thursday, October 21, 2021 6:13 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I got BOTH of those and missed COCA. And in the inverse, I got DIATOM and stabbed around at DIATOMIC but somehow missed it??

Also I'm over the MAMA/MOMMA/MAWMAW and the same with PAPA a few weeks ago. Make your plate and go.

having DIATOMIC and DIATOM yesterday but not ADDITIVITY today suggests the spelling bee editor is a physicist with a grudge against mathematicians