![]() ![]() Still, all was relative bliss in my hive world until someone let a dark secret slip: Although the online Bee does not reveal the total number of words or points possible, it will anoint you “Queen Bee” if you find every word on its list. … Incidents like the unintentional omission of CLICKBAIT give me nightmares.” My poor girlfriend knows that the very last thing I do before bed is check the next day’s word list one last time. 31, clickbait, a pangram, was not recognized): “I am never 10,000 percent sure. One thing that nags at all Bee obsessives is the question: Are there other words out there? I asked Ezersky how he can be sure each daily word list is complete (there was quite a kerfuffle when, on Jan. You get 14 points for that sucker, while only one point for a four-letter word, five points for a fiver, etc. ![]() The online version is practically Pavlovian, awarding each discovery with a chirpy adjective (“Nice!” “Awesome!”) and showing one’s virtual progress through nine levels per day, from “Beginner” to “Genius.” The best moment, by far, is bagging a pangram, a word that uses all seven letters. The print version of Bee, which appears in the New York Times Magazine, plays by slightly different, stingier rules than the online game, which is probably why no one cares about the print Bee. The goal is to make as many so-called common words as you can, using the letters as often as you like-as long as the central letter appears at least once in each word and each word is at least four letters long. Because each letter is encased in a hexagon, the visual effect is hivelike. Every day, it’s made up of seven letters, six of which surround a central letter. If you’re not finding the pangram, it’s going to be really hard to gain progress.Spelling Bee, however, is perfect, a sort of no-holds-barred Boggle, minus the time limit. There are some solvers who won’t even begin solving the rest of the puzzle until they find the pangrams. I have a particularly high bar with the pangram, because that is the linchpin of the puzzle. The Radical New Show That’s Both Brilliant and Hilarious One of 2022’s Best Shows Is Back and Better Than Before Is Jennifer Lawrence’s New Age Gap Rom-Com As Creepy As It Seems? ![]() It’s the Biggest Debut Novel of the Past Year. I try to make the puzzle hard primarily through the answers in the puzzle, especially the longer ones that are worth more points, rather than the pangram itself. I don’t believe there was a single marginal call, but that pangram was wicked, right? I usually try to avoid that, though. I believe all the other words in the word list were six letters or fewer and were very, very, very straightforward. That pangram was so difficult and so hard to see, to stitch together a few letters and then tack on the remaining ones. Ultimately, my guiding question is: What feels fair to our wide-ranging audience? I don’t want to snub those where it’s a word that is so common to their background or lifestyle or culture, but I also don’t want to include something that will truly mystify the vast majority of our solving audience-and not just those queen bee folks who know everything. I’ll see if the word is listed in the major dictionaries that I have at my disposal, which primarily are Merriam-Webster and the Mac dictionary, which I believe riffs off New Oxford American. I’ll see if it gets a lot of news coverage. If I’m unsure, if this is something that’s a total blind spot–hello to all the gardeners out there, you all know I don’t know my plants that well-I’ll go digging around. My methodology is just extensive research. Even though the word list is a binary “yes, it’s in the word list” or “no, it’s not in the word list,” there are tons and tons of close calls. That’s the million-dollar question! A lot of the calls are pretty easy. ![]()
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