B.S.

March 12, 2025 12:29 PM

the letter S is never included — the editor Sam Ezersky said that using an S would make the puzzle way too easy Today's (March 12, 2025) New York Times Spelling Bee Puzzle is #2,500. It has an "S."

In 2022, Ezersky said: I love the letter S — it’s my favorite besides Z. But if every other word is a plural, it can make for tedious solving. That said, I’ve avoided “-ed” and “-ing” for the longest time, and now there are some puzzles where most words end in “-ing.” I feel a little different about S, but never say never.

What if the Bee had an S?
How to Win the New York Times Spelling Bee Every Single Time
Bee-viously

posted by chavenet (33 comments total)

Doesn't accept bofa though
posted by General Malaise at 12:32 PM on March 12 [4 favorites]

I enjoy Spelling Bee, although I play my own very simplified “find the Pangram and move on” version.Sometimes they can be a total nightmare, though.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 12:36 PM on March 12 [4 favorites]

And yet it did accept "boffo." (though not its plural.) I hate Spelling Bee, every single day.
posted by From Bklyn at 12:37 PM on March 12 [6 favorites]

I play spellbound instead.
posted by Peach at 12:43 PM on March 12 [4 favorites]

Doesn't accept bofa though

bofa?

[go ahead, you know you want to]
posted by chavenet at 12:46 PM on March 12 [4 favorites]

The only thing more fun than doing the Spelling Bee is complaining about the obviously real words that the Spelling Bee did not allow.
posted by jacquilynne at 12:54 PM on March 12 [21 favorites]

If you enjoy Spelling Bee, there's a good chance you will also enjoy Squaredle. It has a sort of official word list and then also a list of bonus words that aren't needed to be considered to have 'solved' the puzzle. There are, however, people who definitely aim to do both.
posted by jacquilynne at 12:56 PM on March 12 [4 favorites]

I love spelling bee but I don't understand why this one, of all the puzzles, has a "hints" section to give you the answers.
posted by fennario at 1:17 PM on March 12 [1 favorite]

The only thing more fun than doing the Spelling Bee is complaining about the obviously real words that the Spelling Bee did not allow.

On the Patrick O'Brian Appreciation facebook group, we often complain about nautical terms and fish we, who have read the books a thousand times, are very familiar with that don't appear. And they're no more obscure, I don't think, than some of the less-common Italian and Mexican food names, for instance, that do show up.
posted by Well I never at 1:20 PM on March 12 [2 favorites]

you're telling me Buffaloballs isn't a word
posted by mikemacman at 1:22 PM on March 12 [5 favorites]

> From Bklyn: "And yet it did accept "boffo." (though not its plural.) I hate Spelling Bee, every single day."

A little while ago, the (sole) pangram was "adjudging"; apparently "gianduja" was just too obscure. Probably the most irksome one for me.
posted by mhum at 1:48 PM on March 12 [4 favorites]

I do not generally like Spelling Bee but I did it today to send a message that 'S' belongs in Spelling Bee. It's so dumb that they'll put 'E' and 'D' in the same puzzle all the time, which has the exact same issue as 'S', but somehow one is allowed and the other isn't.
posted by potrzebie at 2:07 PM on March 12 [3 favorites]

Thank you for the mention, Peach. I am the author of Spellbound - see my entry in projects.

I just saw a big spike in users and had no idea what had happened as I usually do my Meta reading in the evening.

Please enjoy, everyone. Free, no ads, no shared data, no bad/mean words. In return, no complaints.
posted by AMyNameIs at 2:29 PM on March 12 [14 favorites]

And they're no more obscure, I don't think, than some of the less-common Italian and Mexican food names, for instance, that do show up.

I find a lot of word lists for this type of puzzle to have a bit of a gender bias. I find that jargony words related to sewing or other things that would traditionally be referred to as women's interests are less likely to show up on the list than things that seem like awfully specific jargon related to things that would traditionally be referred to as men's interests. As an example, the word aran -- found extensively in knitting as an adjective describing a specific style of sweaters, certain stitch patterns and a weight of yarn -- is not considered an ordinary word, but a capitalized geographic word based on the fact that it comes from the Aran islands even though aran-weight yarns can come from anywhere. But Panama is an allowable word, because of the hats, and I don't see how those are terribly different from each other.

That said, I have a lot of women's interests and not a lot of men's interests, so maybe the obscurity level is well-matched for both and I am just a living breathing gender bias who just knows more girl words and less boy words and thinks things are unfair as a result.
posted by jacquilynne at 2:34 PM on March 12 [4 favorites]

I play the free spellsbee.com. Sometimes it glitches after a month of less than 31 days and you can't see the previous day's answers, but besides that it's pretty solid.

Of course there's a lot to complain about with the dictionary, but that's par for the course.
posted by hydrophonic at 2:40 PM on March 12 [2 favorites]

(Not a dig on jacquilynne. Feedback from my wife has confirmed that my complaints about the dictionary aren't very interesting.)
posted by hydrophonic at 2:43 PM on March 12 [1 favorite]

When I play the Spelling Bee, I also play "pangram golf." My goal is to find a pangram with as few short words along the way as possible.

I wanted today's pangram to be my username here, but there wasn't an "n" or "t."
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 2:44 PM on March 12 [1 favorite]

Just noticed they keep stats for me...

532 Puzzles
21,570 Words
757 Pangrams
444 Queen Bees

Hoping mamahacker doesn't find out how many hours I have wasted...
posted by skippyhacker at 3:23 PM on March 12 [1 favorite]

532 Puzzles
444 Queen Bees

WAT
posted by JHarris at 3:38 PM on March 12 [1 favorite]

I squeed.
posted by acrasis at 3:40 PM on March 12 [1 favorite]

> JHarris: "WAT"

The real question is: hints or no hints; and if hints, which hints?

I've been able to get Queen Bees pretty consistently once I started using the grid (which lists how many words there are of each length and of each starting letter) and the two-letter list (which lists how many words there are starting with each 2-letter combo). I will take a look at the "You vs Others" list when I'm down to the last few words to get a sense of whether I'm missing hard or easy words but I refuse to take any "Clues from Other Readers" which I feel basically give away the missing word if you're at all conversant in crossword clues.
posted by mhum at 3:56 PM on March 12 [2 favorites]

AMyNameIs Thank you thank you thank you for Spellbound! I was so sad to give up the puzzles when I dumped the NYT and it has really helped.
posted by Peach at 4:05 PM on March 12 [3 favorites]

I haven’t tried spelling bee for a year I suppose. Tried today after reading this post. When I scored 13 it took me to a “subscribe to keep playing” page and wouldn’t let me continue. So long, speeling bee! I suppose the times will break Wordle next.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 4:17 PM on March 12 [2 favorites]

Oh, definitely hints, but not until you get a pangram, and no non-pangram words until you get all the pangrams. There have to be rules, right?
posted by skippyhacker at 4:22 PM on March 12 [1 favorite]

Peach, I so glad you find the game useful. Me, I just think it's cool that people from all around the world play the game.

You can see all the US states and countries where the game has been played by going to the hamburger menu in the upper left hand corner and choosing Locations. Direct link here.
posted by AMyNameIs at 4:43 PM on March 12 [2 favorites]

What annoys me most about word lists is how often they're inconsistent between games. For example, some of the most usual suspects in the NYT crossword puzzle are rejected in the Spelling Bee. They're owned by the same newspaper; they should have regular coordination meetings and fights about this stuff. Dictionaries should be hurled. (As for 's', I don't think the NYT crossword has ever met a plural it wouldn't accept, whether or not it's ever been seen in the wild.)
posted by trig at 4:45 PM on March 12 [6 favorites]

I don't think the rules for crosswords are typically the same as for word search type games - one has to have a limited word list to be fully playable and the other really doesn't - crossword clues are often people's names and abbreviations and words in other languages that no word find game is likely to accept.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:12 PM on March 12 [1 favorite]

This was not a very fabulous puzzle.
posted by dsword at 6:39 PM on March 12 [2 favorites]

I play the app Spelling Bee the same as the NYTimes Magazine version: only words 5 letters or longer. No Queen Bees for me, but it saves me lots of time not typing in mere-1-point 4-letter words, as well as much of the frustration of not knowing (as others have noted) what dictionary they think they're using.
posted by AbnerRavenwood at 7:26 PM on March 12 [1 favorite]

mhum, aaah that explains it. I've scored one Queen Bee in my whole LIFE. Their word list is too capricious. Is this a foreign word? Is it not foreign enough? (TANKA) Is it too slangy? What if the slang is well-used? What if it's just old slang, or the kind you'd see in Variety? (BOFFO). Does the word have anything at all to do with a proper noun? Well what if it's been eroded into common usage by time? Do you just try everything that might even have a slight chance of being in? Because if you even miss one word, no Queen Bee for you.

We've never noticed that Spelling Bee has hints before. Maybe the next time we hit Genius we'll try it, although for some words even that probably won't help.
posted by JHarris at 9:11 PM on March 12 [1 favorite]

I use the spelling bee to fall asleep, by having one AirPod in and the VoiceOver screen reader on, it's just enough distraction to keep my brain from thinking too much and not so much stimulation as Twitter or a crossword so it hits the sweet spot. In that case the awkward swiping through the letters to make the words is kind of a bonus.

NYT Games screen reader support is better than most newspaper game sites but still far from perfect. Word games are some of the few games that people who can't see can still play though so I'm grateful its' usable at all.

When Wordle first came out, it was totally unusable with a screen reader. People did all kinds of exploring with web developer tools to get around it and someone finally made a browser extension that added the needed extra Javascript to announce when a letter was absent, present or correct.

It took a while but after NYT acquired it they finally put in the work to make that happen directly in the app.

There's still a long way to go for crosswords to be fully supported. Apple News on iOS is usable, you can play the whole puzzle, but flipping between down and across is still a big chore and slows you way down.

That's my biggest gripe about many strategies for supporting screen readers in games - they make it possible to play but don't spend any effort seeing if they can make the gameplay remotely as fast as a non-screen reader user's experience. I can type words just as fast as anyone but navigating a crossword a square at a time takes forever.
posted by Space Coyote at 6:38 AM on March 13 [2 favorites]

> I find a lot of word lists for this type of puzzle to have a bit of a gender bias.

Your hypothesis tracks hilariously accurately. (Table of words better known by males than by females and vice versa). Top male words, howitzer, thermistor, azimuth, femtosecond, milliamp. Top female words, peplum, tulle, chignon, bandeau, freesia.
posted by lucidium at 6:59 AM on March 13

> trig: "What annoys me most about word lists is how often they're inconsistent between games."

I understand that frustration but I've personally made my peace with it. I figure that crosswords should probably have a little more leeway in its wordlist. However, the part that bugs me is that the Spelling Bee wordlist doesn't seem to be very consistent with itself. The one that sticks with me is one puzzle where "lunula" (the white circle at the base of the fingernail) was accepted but "inguinal" (probably one of the most common hernia types) was not. I think there's also some categories like Indian foods where they accept some things (e.g.: "naan", "roti") but not others (e.g.: I think "paratha" is not accepted, not sure about "dosa").
posted by mhum at 10:20 AM on March 13