I now express my disgust at the sbsence yesterday of DORIC and DICHROIC.
I think Doric was excluded because it’s capitalized, referring to the Dorians.
Incidentally, the Times ran an article (gift link) recently on why some words are included and others not. A brief quote from the article.
“If you simply include every theoretical word imaginable in a given puzzle, it will be that much more difficult to get to Amazing, Genius and beyond, and not in a satisfying way,” said Sam Ezersky, the puzzle’s editor.
Well, I’m impressed that three of you got it. It was a totally new word to me. I didn’t have any idea until I saw it in “Yesterday’s Anwers”.
Man, I had a natural on Friday, but the past two days I’ve missed by one word. 
BOUCLE and CARDIOID this, Ezersky.
A few days ago, when the pangram was weighty, I had one of my shortest runs to Queen Bee.
Yeah, I’m never going to get BOUCLE, whatever that means.
Today’s Bee seemed a little unusual because it was a bingo but five of the letters (a,d,e,g,n) only made one word. Also, there were no words that began with two consonants…not sure if that’s rare. Also also, if you get HENBANE I tip my cap because I sure didn’t.
Same here.
Is today the first time that E and R are together?
Think so. I note that a lot of perfectly cromulent re- and -er words are not accepted. Just like non- and un- words.
Huh, that wasn’t so bad. When I felt compelled to try words like ENVELOPER and PROVER I got a little twitchy, but if you can keep it to less than 50 words, it seems tolerable.
It is indeed…I scanned the database back to 2020.
Occasionally I have a day where I get to Genius with no pangram and no four-letter words. Today is such a day. It needs a catchy name like ‘throwing rocks into a quarry’.
No, wait…more catchy than that.
Wait, really? There are few puzzles with E and R in the same one? That seems weird, especially given how many puzzles have E and D or I, N and G together.
Answering a question you didn’t ask: there have been 17 puzzles with all of EDING; but until today, no ER.
I wonder why that is.
I’m looking at the Spelling Bee Solver website for today, August 19, 2026 (with letters elnoprv). It has a note:
Milestone alert: This puzzle is the first in Spelling Bee history to include both E and R. Perhaps until now the editors had worried that the proliferation of RE‑ and ‑ER words would make the Bee too cheesy.
Of course, with a ‘V’ as the middle letter, that certainly limits the number of possible words.
I hope Sam goes big someday!
EGINRS-D
words: 905
score: 6,179 pts
pangrams: 48
Today, why UNITARIAN but not TRINITARIAN? If one is a proper noun, I’d consider both to be.
I’m pretty sure it’s because ‘unitarian’ can be used to describe someone outside the religious context, but ‘Trinitarian’ only has the singular, proper noun religious meaning.