Well, I do the entire puzzle with my eyes closed, so just knowing there are words is a spoiler for me.
In real life, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten to QB without at least the first page of hints.
Has there ever been a puzzle without at least a couple eight-letter words?
Sure. March 4th had none.
Do whatever you want. Two of us politely asked that that sort of thing be spoilered going forward.
I’ll avoid mentioning it. I just never realized it was a thing.
Well, TANKA is a new entry after being rejected a few times. I’m a little weak on ballet terminology, so BATTEMENT isn’t leaping to mind, either. Glad I bailed after reaching ‘genius.’
I know and I appreciate it.
Today had too many similar letters to the one a couple of days ago where GENTLEMAN was the pangram. It should have been more spaced out.
Yeah, I’m 70 years old, pretty damn well-read, and have never heard of those two, either. I’d call them technical, obscure, or both.
Nm. Can’t get the blur to work right.
Hey. Today’s Bee is #2500, and has an S.
Despite that, it still doesn’t have a huge number of words. I’m at 39 words and only 21 points more to go. So almost certainly 45 or fewer total words. (I haven’t looks at the hints yet.)
I guess Sam doesn’t play bridge, since SLUFF is not accepted.
Nor climbed under avalanche conditions.
Alas, the FOSSA is not represented, either.
SOLFA and SULFA are not accepted either.
That’s SLOUGH.
Very exciting puzzle today, got to genius very quickly without any four letter words.
Try googling “ruff and sluff” and you’ll get lots of hits. I tried googling “ruff and slough” and Google included the other spelling, which seems to be more common. Even when I googled only for “ruff and slough”, I still got lots of pages with “ruff and sluff”.
Huh, so it does. M-W has it is less common, but that’s probably in the general usage
Weirdly (at least for me), I got to Genius today without a pangram. The one pangram today wasn’t particularly tough, but I obviously didn’t see it for quite some time.
Yay! An S!
Looks like alfa is off the list again. (Blurred because it’s close to an accepted word)
Got to QB, figured I’d give it a go, it being a special day and all.
Also, after LUFF was disallowed 50 times, it has been allowed twice. Ahoy, sailors!
Hopefully the ‘S’ is a one-off so I’ll never have to see FLUS and FOOSBALL again.