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

once again pissed off that CAVITATE isn't a 'real' word

i mean has the guy even seen 'hunt for red october'

xps alembic ⚗️

My job is to get genius on the NYT spelling bee every day and my bf’s job is everything else

— dj fuck (@eggshellfriend) May 28, 2023

Yes that was annoying, also "capitate". And cavatappi! I thought all pastas were fair game.

Spelling Bee Buddy is actually (and finally) a useful tool!

They've also been experimenting with the design for letting you play previous days and after too many one UI that needed too many clicks I think they've finally figured it out.

oh no

DOGGO

i found the one a couple of thursdays ago very difficult - the one about black ops maybe it was just because i hadn’t done one in a couple of months? felt more like a friday or even saturday tbh. enjoyable tho

how are CYCLONIC and CYCLONICALLY not accepted?! come on, sam

lol i just realised i was posting about the crossword in the wrong thread, duh

Speaking of other nyt puzzles, Connections is getting better. usually they have at least one hard group, like the one with SWIMMERS today. There's a copycat site called conlextions that's good too.

Regarding Connections, the final swimmers category today was clever but not gettable on its own at all imo, and you had to know the four WNBA team names before that, which I also didn't know. My sister and I had a laugh over it

the purple (hardest) group I'm most proud of having gotten is:

mild, livid, mix, dill

yesterday's bubble, globe, marble and pearl seemed obvious in the end

Today's Spelling Bee was quite something! looking at the letter choices you would initially think there weren't very many words, but it turned out there were 64 of them, including 5 pangrams!

sent sam links to 4 nyt articles that used CYCLONIC, he should let them know it’s not a real word

I was looking up a word on the M-W site and they have a live-ish list of top word searches and they were ALL from today's Connections.

Maybe everyone knows about this but i recently discovered puzzgrid.com which is now my go-to timewasting activity. It's inspired by the Only Connect version of Connections, meaning there's a time limit and you can guess the categories. Here are two of the grids I made.
https://puzzgrid.com/grid/86204
https://puzzgrid.com/grid/86648

Okay is it okay to just note the rather tiresome acai/acacia and coca/cacao/cocoa sequences?

(apologies if that is a spoiler for anyone)

https://i.imgur.com/c7Msy8Z.jpg

that thing that happens where you compulsively enter a word that you know isn’t an actual accepted word but you do it anyway because it’s the only thing you can see at that moment

Today’s: OOMPALOOMPA

...GTFO.

I know it's been said a billion times but their cherrypicking of what does and does not count as a legit word is such complete + total BS.

i tried two old tech ones: palmpilot and popmail

I have been doing these for the last few weeks while on holidays - have got to g-zone on every one so far (a few took extreme mental grind for me) - but this one has fuct me, I don’t see myself even making “amazing” at this point

And yes would love to have a word with whoever decides that panini is okay but arancini is no good (etc etc)

His name is Sam, and (as has been discussed) it's entirely his idiosyncratic preferences that shape the game.

The game is to guess what he allows and doesn't allow. It isn't the full set of English words, or Scrabble-allowed words. It's just him and his quirks. If you or I curated the game it would probably be just as idiosyncratic, just in different ways.

If you don't feel like doing that, go play a different game.

There are clones that use a broader word set, but you don't get the same aspect of communing with the NYT games ecosystem and having running statistics, and commiserating with a million other wretchedly addicted dorkwads like me.

I guess it's part of the charm. "Tooltip" was one I was cursing him for yesterday.

NYT Spelling Bee After Dark

Sam Ezersky, for it is he, is even more frustrating when he’s creating crosswords so I’m glad that spelling bee keeps him busy enough

tried ROBOCOP and BRITPOP yesterday but i guess sam is no fan of either

The first word I saw when I opened this game today was alchemical, and I thought that was pretty good, and I was disappointed.

same!

Thirded. And I usually try to get QB with hints but after one too many "IDK what this thing is" clues I just gave up.

big words today

No RHYTHMICITY :/

Or THICC

no BOLLOCK or COCKBLOCK : /

I feel if The Bear can win all the Golden Globes we can at least have a COOKBRO

okay not accepting MONOACID is ridiculous even by sam’s standards

The other day we were mad that it didn't take CETACEA

and i guess NONACIDIC is such an obscure word too. not
sam must’ve failed chemistry since he hates it so much

Ah, the daily ritual of Bee annoyance, what Sam will and won't include.

I love the smell of grievance in the morning

Allow me to grouse about a word that is not accepted today: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/placable

Last night's real words that were not accepted: BARDO and DOBRO.

accepting INEFFABLE but not EFFABLE is LAFFABLE

came here to post the same sentiment. i mean it’s one thing to cherry pick what’s accepted and what’s not, but this is pretty ridiculous

(i haven’t finished the bee yet but opened the spoilers because i knew exactly which words you meant lol)

Just out of devil's advocacy, have you really ever said, or written, EFFABLE?

Or, like, vincible, couth, plussed, sheveled?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unpaired_word#In_English

sam is a force of nature and we mere humans can attempt to rationalize his decision making but the point of this game is precisely the lack of any rhyme or reason when it comes to what’s accepted and what’s not

ppl love knowing the name of the dude who randomly deleted some words from the list of words

Scanner darkly, I have said before that if anyone else curated the list, the list would be just as arbitrary (just in a different way). What is obscure, what is obscene, what is a variant spelling.

Sam is okay with pipit, pippin, tallit, cabala, and dildo. He likes the acacia and acai combo, plus cacao cocoa coca.

The game is not (and has never been) "every word." Even Scrabble isn't "every word"; it's "every word in the official dictionary," which may mean the US Scrabble dictionary or SOWPODS or whatever.