NYT crossword puzzle app subscription

The Game Room
21

I play Beehive on the app (on my phone), but I’ve seen a paper version in the Sunday Magazine.

I think the scoring rules are different on the paper version.

On the app, you get 1 point for a 4 letter word, and if more than 4 letters, a point for each letter, plus if there is a panagram (all 7 letters used, even if some are repeated) you get a point for each letter, plus 7, so it can add up pretty quickly, depending on what the letters are.

Today there were O, U, G, H, T, so lots of longer words with those letters (plus W and R). The point total for Genius was 207. Recently E and D were included, so you could make lots of words and then change the tense (eg, tense, and tensed) and get easy points,

A few days ago, the middle letter was J, I think - so the Genius point level was low, like 51 or something.

Apparently the Spelling Bee on the app is really popular, the paper had a story about it last month,

FWIW - I balked at paying the $$$ for the Crossword app for a long time - but with my subscription to the paper, it was only $20 for the year. My Sunday-only delivered paper is now $16/week, but dropping to all-digital is actually more expensive.

22

I usually get the pangrams, and get to Genius level about 75% of the time. But I still miss some simple, common 4-letter words.

23

It does. A window popups proclaiming “Queen Bee” and declaring that you’ve found all of the words possible. Dissapointingly, there is no sound affect accompanying the pop-up, a la when a Sunday crossword is completed.
I play with a friend long distance (we compare words, so we’re cheating, but sometimes we get Queen Bee in combination.) I hit it solo yesterday when I finally camp up wtih ‘woohoo.’

24

Thanks - I must have misread the NYT article where Queen Bee was mentioned - I certainly haven’t got there.

I always start with a review of yesterday’s words (which sometimes shows checks for the ones you got) and was reminded that “woohoo” is considered a word by NYT. Doing this in the past is how I got “tomtit” today.

25

I’m getting really tired of the Spelling Bee rejecting perfectly good words as “not on word list.” I’d like to know what list they use. Didn’t they used to have a way to suggest new words? I haven’t seen that for a while.

26

Apparently whatever list they are using doesn’t allow British spellings. Today’s spelling bee accepts rumor but not rumour.

27

The suggestion email is in the help section.

I agree that the rejection of seemingly valid words is frustrating, but also that some ridiculous words are accepted. Today I crossed the Genius threshold with “unhat” (which my iPhone is rejecting) - I only tried it as a lark because who knows?, but I don’t consider it a real word (not trying to start a debate though, maybe it is).

Yesterday I didn’t (and would never have thought to) try “burgoo” (wtf? Apparently a regional stew) but knew that they’d accept “boohoo” from past experience. What they consider “obscure” seems pretty random.

28

The Spelling Bees showed up for awhile on my digital - I only pay for Sunday delivery. Always made the highest tier, but never got “Queen Bee”, not knew that was a thing. Sometimes they would miss or choose not to list quite common medical terms, etc. It wasn’t necessarily time well spent and so I didn’t want to pay for more. I hope the Magazine prints more cryptic puzzles - there was one two weeks ago, but not last week.