My objection is more about consistency than any particular word. Sam can of course abitrate words as he sees fit. But it is dismaying when he accepts for example, bonobo and callaloo, while rejecting gannet. I’d be happy if he allowed more “obscure” words like that.
It isn’t a big deal, it’s just that I have a goal of making it to Genius with no clues every day, and when I am close but struggling, it’s so disappointing to have a word like naphtha or gannet rejected.
For sure, one person’s obvious is another’s obscure.
I live in Massachusetts now, but knew the word before we moved here three years ago, and not because I saw them in Maryland, Nevada, or Georgia, the other states I’ve lived in. As I said, I know almost nothing about birds, and I have no idea if I’ve ever seen a gannet in the flesh. Or feathers. Whatever. Somehow, somewhere, I learned the word, so it’s obvious to me.
As I mentioned above, I may have first heard abbatoir in Monty Python’s architect sketch.
Speaking of birds, it’s been a long while since I’ve seen a frikkin tomtit.
Did anyone find the puzzle yesterday (3/4, G A C E N O T) harder than usual?
And does anyone else think that one of the pangrams, COTANGENT, might reasonably be considered obscure, if one hadn’t happened to study trigonometry? It was the last word I got, putting me over Genius level.
Yes, I found yesterday harder than usual. In general I seem to find the three–vowel puzzles more difficult.
Today is also a three-vowel day.
Indeed it is.
I didn’t find today as hard as yesterday.
I did not either.
It may be that today’s letters are just more common? And then occasionally the letters include i n g or e d, so any it’s possible to add a second word for any verbs.
I did find it harder than usual. That pangram was one of the earlier words I got, but then I have studied that subject. I didn’t get the other pangram until after looking at the hints and ended up three words short of QB.
I got that one fairly easily because I had trig in high school and it’s in NYT crossword puzzles. But I had trouble with today’s (March 5) puzzle.
Armorial & Malarial
?
Probably not as shocking and scary as playing QAT.
OK, today it takes untune and untune, which I don’t even think are words, but it doesn’t allow detune and detuned, which I think are correct. Chrome spell check doesn’t like any of them.
Also accepted DETENTE but not DETENT orDETENTED.
(Apparently, Chrome doesn’t think they last two are words either, and changes them to the first.)
It didn’t take the obvious rude word today, but I had to try…
Sam was born in the 1800s apparently.
Haha! Evidently.
I was quite disappointed when DENUTTED was rejected today. That’s a word that we farm boys used to describe a bull calf after it had been castrated.
Several people in the Comments section were miffed that UNTENDED (as a garden) wasn’t included.
I’ve always been puzzled by the lack of COON. Do people still use that as a slur? Because coon dog is perfectly cromulent. But I get that he has to draw the line somewhere.