I think I lucked out with the way the letters were initially arranged, because the pangram was the first word I saw.
I have also been reminded that “woot” is officially in the dictionary now.
TIL that “Titian” (the hair color) remains capitalized because it specifically refers to the painter. And thus is disallowed.
But I try it every time. Just because things could change.
True. Today’s “Letter Boxed” accepted “Halon”.
Attempted but missing today for various reasons: assorted Britishisms (“moggy”, “gammy”), a baseball acronym (“LOOGY”) and an obscure musical term (“plagal”).
Evidently “gloam” is too old and “glamp” is too new.
I was wondering about “glamp”. I’ve only ever seen it in “glamping” form.
Today:
Not accepted: ARGH
Accepted: AARGH
Not that today’s (Sunday) puzzle needs any more words, but WITHE and HITHE are too archaic to make the cut.
I was going to mention a few days ago, when the pangram was VIBRANT (we don’t need to blur words from several days ago, do we?), that I had gotten part way through the puzzle, then took a nap. As I woke up, two new words popped into my head, one I was sure was the pangram: VARIANT and BIVARIANT. The first was accepted, the second wasn’t. Too obscure, I guess.
A few days later I came across BIVARIANT in a book I was reading.
I tried WITHE too, and was pleasantly surprised that WIGHT wasn’t considered too archaic.
After getting WHINGING, I didn’t expect WHINGEING to be accepted as well.
And yesterday, I tried and missed with TITIAN (mentioned above), as well as INANITION, ANTINOMIAN and AMANITA.
Variant spelling have supposedly been removed from the list of accepted words, but there’s a number of them still there. I have a list of them if anyone wants to see it.
The rules used to say that variant spellings weren’t valid, but they no longer say that.
Sure, post it.
OK, list of variant spelling accepted:
ageing, aging
ambiance, ambience
ameba(e), amoeba(e)
bandana, bandanna
benefited, benefitted
binging, bingeing
caky, cakey
canceling(ed), cancelling(ed)
caiman, cayman
coifed, coiffed
donut, doughnut
doxed, doxxed
duffel, duffle
eyeing, eying
glamor, glamour
grandad, granddad
hiccuped, hiccupped
idyl, idyll
likeable, likable
liveable, livable
lollygag, lallygag
loveable, lovable
loveably, lovably
mama, mamma, momma
moola, moolah
myna, mynah
nunchuk, nunchuck
omelet, omelette
papa, poppa
papaw, pawpaw
pewee, peewee
petit, petite
pipet, pipette
pizazz, pizzazz
queueing, queuing
tepee, teepee
tingeing, tinging
vaxed, vaxxed
veld, veldt
weenie, wienie
whingeing, whinging
Thanks. I’ve learned to play most if not all of these, which means Sam will start removing some.
Sam Ezersky’s love of fabrics strikes again, with TAFFETA.
And @dtilque that list of variant spellings is helpful. Thanks; I hope they stay around!
Not an unusual fabric or word, though, unlike nanking (?).
Typically used in fancy dresses. My German great-grandmother got married in a gold-colored taffeta dress.
Also used in Joni Mitchell’s Michael from Mountains.
At least I’ve heard of that one.
One of the first words I saw today was DICOT, which I remember from Botany class. It’s in M-W too. But sadly it’s not on the list.