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

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!

Captcha and phat, no less. I got QB but had to cheat for one word chuppah Ive never heard of. And I grew up in a hasidic neighbourhood.

Lived in not grew up in but yeah.

i actually tried captcha and was stunned

was surprised that APICAL was not accepted, it's a medical term but I thought that it was also a common word

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

It's such a standard chipper fish over this way. I might actually suggest it as a possible word (although I assume people are always doing that). Is it more esoteric than CHUPPAH? I suppose these are the things you have to weigh up when you're compiling these lists.

I got QB but had to cheat for one word chuppah Ive never heard of.

I only know what this is because of Gilmore Girls.

OK, look, I know my constant outrage is tiresome, but LALLYGAGGING? Absolutely not. The word is LOLLYGAGGING.

otm

Yeah I think we brought that up before here? Or maybe it was reddit I cant recall.

I'm stuck with one word left on todays, a BI7 that even with clues I cant work out.

I couldn't figure it out either

xp the spelling bee accepts both lallygagging and lollygagging as far as I remember

surely one of the things that one does with a TOWELETTE is WETTEN something with it?

Not in Sam's little world

Trayce, I think you were looking for BIOCIDE. Certainly obscure but not incomprehensible.

Generally I agree that Sam's choices of what to include/exclude are idiosyncratic. At this point, though, I think we should just accept that that's part of the game.

Nothing stops you or me from creating a word puzzle that includes more terms relating to sailing ships and fewer terms for birds and pasta. Or one that eschews Yiddish and embraces more Briticisms.

I get the frustration, and have felt it too. But at this point, if you still give a fuck about the Bee, you have to just live with its idiosyncrasies. Or do something else with your time. Sam has made it clear what he cares about (Jewish New Yorky birdwatching and pasta) and what he doesn't care about (98.3 of all the other things).

I truly try to think "oh poor Sam, he doesn't know <whatever perfectly reasonable word is not allowed in that day's bee>

Ah yeah, I just like giving out about things.

Anybody do the old-school paper version on Sundays? It’s very humane. 4-letter words don’t count, you only get 3 points for the pangram, and there’s no “Queen Bee” because - get this - Frank Longo (Ed.) provides a word list but says that ultimately you’re the judge of what words should count and what words shouldn’t. It’s up to you!

Oh no absolutely, the whole point is to gripe about the stupid inclusions and exclusions. I do enjoy the ways that it's still NYC-centric: occasional Yiddish-isms, chi-chi, etc, but LALLYGAG is torches & pitchforks material. Just simply wrong.

I feel absolutely certain that Longo, while not forbidding you from awarding yourself 1 point for LALLYGAG if you wanted to (all words count as 1 point in the paper version apart from the PG), would never dream of including it in his answer list.

the way this puzzle immediately tamps down your sense of pleasure and achievement at thinking you've found the word ABATTOIR for instance is just inimical to joy imo

^knew what that would be. Insane

otoh you have to enjoy the themed pair of VIBRATOR and RABBIT today

not clicking on that because i'm at work lol

Yesterday I was two away from QB on my own, then couldn't get IMPENITENT even with hints. There seemed to be a lot of bickering in the comments yesterday, too. Although as usual I didn't see the offending comments, just the comments about the comments (this always happens me on Twitter as well. I never see the thing, only the people talking about the thing).

i thought ARRIBBIATA was on the list before?

Yeah those 2 missing A words are clangers even by Sam's arbitrary sense. Is ABATTOIR not common usage in the US or something?

no it is perfectly well-known