My biggest problem with Spelling Bee is that I keep discovering ten dollar words and missing out on the fifty cent words…
I love it, though - it’s one of my few daily puzzles that I can keep coming back to every day. I’ve got ‘Amazing’ and ‘Genius’ without help on a few occasions, but never ‘Queen Bee’ without turning to the community hints.
In Spelling Bee parlance, “Hints” are the grid of letters and 2-letter list, while “Clues” are the definitions provided by players who are faster and sharper than us.
It’d be nice to use these terms here so we know which we’re referring to.
A bit of Celtic exclusionism today: no hits on either CRAIC or CRANACHAN.
That’s probably good, since those are fairly obscure words. I certainly wouldn’t have gotten them.
I’m disappointed CHAINRING is not accepted. But perhaps non-cyclists would not be familiar.
OK, I had a 3 game streak where I got to Queen Bee with just the hints from the grid and 2 letter list, and without using any clues.
Then on Saturday and yesterday I was stuck on the last word and finally had to resort to the clues. Much to my annoyance they were both words that probably would have come to me without the clues if I had worked on it a bit more: callback on Saturday and riffraff on Sunday.
Today I again managed to get to Queen Bee without clues. It helps that I’m off from work until September!
I always get caught on the same words. I think this is the 4th or 5th time I’ve missed arancini (well, every time it’s been used, since I’ve never once remembered it).
I need to thank an acquaintance, Bea, for arancini. She was very enthusiastic about them and insisted that I eat some, but my (unspoken) response was “What’s the big deal?”
Sam Ezersky likes food and cooking words, which also alerted me to arancini. We know, though, from posts above, that he’s not a musicologist and not into poetic form either. He likes some archaic words (nankeen) but not other, more common ones (gibbet, hoyden)
I can never remember how to spell it, so even when I remember it it takes me about five tries to get it right. Don’t know why this one eludes me particularly, but there it is.
On today’s puzzle: I suppose it was unreasonable to assume that OTAKU would be there. I watch too much anime, I guess.
I knew they weren’t valid, but I kept on seeing LAKOTA and KOLKATA today.
Did anyone else think the pangram was going to be minicycle?
No, but I did try millicycle. Was not accepted.
Curse you, Sam, and your obsession with obscure fabrics.
Meanwhile, what’s wrong with PION?
Virtually no subatomic particles or their classes are accepted, except the ones everyone knows (electron, proton, neutron). So things like muon and lepton are right out.
I had a lazy procrastinating day, which was just as well, considering how long today’s took me. I was about to give up and look up a clue when I did spot the fabric word, which BTW while not common is nowhere as obscure as NANKEEN–it’s not archaic, in that it’s still sold under that name.
And considering Sam’s food obsession, if ARANCINI was accepted, why not PIGNOLI?
OK, supposedly CHICA is on the list because it’s a plant name–but I have never heard of it. Meanwhile, two plants that aren’t uncommon weren’t accepted today: VINCA, CLIVIA.
Yep, I’ve been trying VINCA for a long time. Also VILLI.
I tried VILLI the other day too! When CVS first came to my area, 30+ years ago, I kept thinking of it as Chorionic Vilii Sampling.
Yesterday was frustrating, with the obscure TORTONI and TINHORN.
Today’s was straightforward, but MEED and COMEDO weren’t accepted.
DOTCOM was also rejected today, although it’s been accepted in previous puzzles.
RIMING not accepted today but there’s yet another “niche” food word in the mix.
Today was a bit different for having only one vowel. I made it all the way to Queen Bee without using the clues, though I do use the hints (the number of each two-letter combination and how many words of each length).