# Spelling Bee-like puzzles: Are they lots easier in other languages? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 25, 2022, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spelling-bee-like-puzzles-are-they-lots-easier-in-other-languages/958386 "2022-01-25T22:08:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Tired\_and\_Cranky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a87d85/32.png) [@Tired\_and\_Cranky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tired_and_Cranky)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2022, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spelling-bee-like-puzzles-are-they-lots-easier-in-other-languages/958386/21 "2022-01-26T21:43:05Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > The puzzle is trivial to construct. Take a word that has 7 distinct letters: OUTRIGHT, for example. Then mix up the letters, say > > TGH > U > ROI > Then filter your dictionary to include only words of 5 or more letters that are made up exclusively of those seven letters and also use the letter U. There’s your puzzle. Two more steps - filter out archaic, obscure, or highly technical terms that most players wouldn’t have fun with. Check to make sure that the score range is acceptable. I’m guessing they wouldn’t want either too many or too few available points. If the maximum available points is out of bounds, pick a different center letter and try again. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2022, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spelling-bee-like-puzzles-are-they-lots-easier-in-other-languages/958386/22 "2022-01-26T21:57:17Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > Then filter your dictionary to include only words of 5 or more letters A Spelling Bee word has a minimum of 4 letters. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2022, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spelling-bee-like-puzzles-are-they-lots-easier-in-other-languages/958386/23 "2022-01-26T22:23:24Z")
> [@Tired\_and\_Cranky](#): > > filter out archaic, obscure, or highly technical terms that most players wouldn’t have fun with. Also filter out any objectionable words: the standard taboo words (curse and sexually explicit words) plus the new taboo words (racial epithets). If I were running it, there would be a word list that has only acceptable words, so this step would not be needed. The whole thing could be automated with only a perfunctory review before publication. And based on the words that consistantly don’t show up, I’m fairly sure they have done this. Personally, I think they went a bit too far in removing technical/obscure terms. I have a longish list of words that are not obscure to me, but do not show up in the puzzles. OK, not all those belong in the puzzles, but I think some do. One is an outright error, which I’d expect to have been fixed by now. So as far as I can tell, they’ve never changed their word list. At least not in the last year, which is how long I’ve been playing. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2022, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spelling-bee-like-puzzles-are-they-lots-easier-in-other-languages/958386/24 "2022-01-26T22:25:21Z")
> [@CookingWithGas](#): > > A Spelling Bee word has a minimum of 4 letters. The rules for the Sunday puzzle in the Times are different. Five or more letters only and you don’t get credit for length. A bingo (pangram) counts as three. The example I gave was from last Sunday. But the basic idea of the construction remains. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2022, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spelling-bee-like-puzzles-are-they-lots-easier-in-other-languages/958386/25 "2022-01-27T00:15:34Z")
That’s interesting. I’ve been doing it almost every day for a couple of months and never noticed that Sunday was any different. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2022, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spelling-bee-like-puzzles-are-they-lots-easier-in-other-languages/958386/26 "2022-01-27T02:02:53Z")
The online one isn’t different on Sunday. That’s only the print version. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2022, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spelling-bee-like-puzzles-are-they-lots-easier-in-other-languages/958386/27 "2022-01-27T08:17:35Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > What do French and German Scrabble do? This has been answered for German and this link has been posted previously, but I’m reposting to mention that French doesn’t have separate tiles with diacritics. I was curious if this corresponds to alphabetizing rules in those languages, and it does not. > **[Scrabble letter distributions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrabble_letter_distributions)** > > Editions of the word board game Scrabble in different languages have differing letter distributions of the tiles, because the frequency of each letter of the alphabet is different for every language. As a general rule, the rarer the letter, the more points it is worth. > Most languages use sets of 100 tiles, since the original distribution of ninety-eight tiles was later augmented with two blank tiles. In tournament play, while it is acceptable to pause the game to count the tiles remaining in the... [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spelling-bee-like-puzzles-are-they-lots-easier-in-other-languages/958386.md?page=1)