Words not accepted today:
FAIN
LIEF
And although one pangram was INEFFABLE, they didn’t accept EFFABLE.
Today I wanted it to accept PRUNO, but nope.
Those are some power words there, but I was surprised it didn’t like FILEABLE or FILABLE.
After trying out some of the other online spelling bee games, I’m starting to appreciate good 'ol Sam, who isn’t old at all (he’s only 27.) Besides the Bee, he’s also a crossword constructor. I remember doing one of his Saturday puzzles several months ago and it was quite well done. Perhaps he’ll take over for Will Shortz someday.
Being as we’re all nitpickers here, I’ll just mention that this should be good ol’ Sam, the apostrophe indicating the missing letter D.
Well, it did accept porn and porno.
As do I.
It accepts a number of not-so-family-friendly words, although not outright crudities. For example, it’ll accept fellate and dildo.
Yeah, fuck those vegetable trays! Nobody likes them anyway.
Did you think that @dtilque typed crudités?
Not actually, no.
Just for fun, I wrote a little script to check SOWPODS (a merging of Scrabble Official Words & Official Scrabble Players Dictionary) against the Saturday Spelling Bee, and there are 47 legal Scrabble words, of which 23 were accepted by Sam. If you want to see the full list:
GOOR
GOOROO
GORGON *
GORP *
GROG *
GROUP *
GROW *
GROWN *
GROWNUP *
GRUGRU
GURN
GURU *
NONPOOR
NURR
OURN
POOR *
PORN *
PORNO *
POUR *
PROG
PROGUN
PRONG*
PRONOUN *
PROO
PROP *
PROW *
PURR *
ROGNON
RONG
ROON
ROOP
ROUP
RUNG *
RURP
RURU
UNGROUP *
UNGROWN
UNPROP
UNWORN *
UNWRUNG
UPGROW
UPGROWN
UPPROP
UPRUN
WORN *
WRONG *
WRUNG *
The day before that, there are 81 SOWPODS hits, to Sam’s 24 total words.
The day before that, 106 to Sam’s 42.
This is not to prove anything, but to give an idea of what Sam’s curated space looks like vs. an unbounded word list like SOWPODS.
And, yes, whenever I see his byline on the crosswords, I know I’m usually going to enjoy the puzzle. I had no idea he was in his 20s!
Today, still no NAPHTHA, PHTHALATE, or NAPHTHALENE.
Yep, I had to check dictionary.com to make sure I was spelling naphthalene correctly. I was, it’s just not taking it. That’s an 18 point pangram!
Today I was disappointed that it didn’t take antheap.
I’m surprised it still doesn’t take HELLA. it takes words like GOTTA and LOTTA (I think those are the ones they take; I could be wrong).
God damn, I’m a fucking English major and the words you lot bitch about that are not being accepted. Come on.
Maybe because you’re an English major? These are common chemical classes. Naphtha is varnish thinner. Fels-Naptha [sic] used to be a common brand of laundry soap. Naphthalene is mothballs. Phthalates have been in the news a lot. I’m a complete layman and know these words.
First, I apologize for being cranky last night. That was several magnitudes of annoyance too high.
I do know what naphtha is. I’ve known it since I was about five years old as my dad always had a hand-labeled bottle of it around in his workroom.
I know the full form as well. I was a chemistry major in college until I changed tack. I wouldn’t have it on my word list, either.
I guess when I look at these, I think they are largely fair and defensible omissions. I’m also used to this kind of sometimes arbitrary-feeling curating from playing word games on my phone going back to the late 2000s. As long as I’m not playing Scrabble, I don’t expect every possible word to be in there, because for the majority of people that would not be fun (or so I surmise. I know I would not be having fun if I was expected to find a word like oxyphenbutazone in a pile of letters. Or even something like quipu. Hell, playing a casual game of scrabble and throwing down AAS gets me threatening looks and “that’s not a word!” unless I’m playing competitive types. If I’m playing Scrabble with people at a party, unless I know them well, I do not throw down things like AI, AE, SUQ, PYZ, etc., if I ever want to play with them again.)