NYT Spelling Bee

[Parasaurolophus]

Oooh, three! I only have two, and am not at genius yet.

[Langue_doc]

They aren't too difficult--one's a compound.

[ab_grp]

Helpful to know! I finally dragged myself to exactly genius.  And totally feeling like one right now! Ugh.

[ab_grp]

Woohoo! I got to QB all by my lonesome after being stuck on exactly genius forever.  And I tried a forumite's moniker, which appears to be a word but was not accepted.  Hmm! Or, should I say, pfft!

[Langue_doc]

Congrats!
I'm stuck at 117 points. I tried a forumite's moniker too, most likely the same one, as it wasn't accepted.

[ab_grp]

Thanks! It helped to know there was another pangram to search for, although I had the one you had referred to (but was too sleep-deprived to realize it).  Good luck!

[nebo113]

They aren't too difficult--one's a compound.

I thought it rejected compounds.

[Langue_doc]

SB is inconsistent with its definitions. The word was archrival.

[ab_grp]

Definitely inconsistent!

I did make it to genius but still have 20 points to QB and am flagging.  We'll see.  At least I'm feeling a little more alert today, but I think QB yesterday was a fluke.

[Langue_doc]

I made it to QB yesterday, late at night. I'm up to genius today. Not sure if I'll find any more words.

[ab_grp]

I made it to QB yesterday, late at night. I'm up to genius today. Not sure if I'll find any more words.

That's great.  What were the final words you found, out of curiosity? I think my final one was archaic.  We got to within 7 points of QB today after comparing lists but decided to run the programs so we can move on with things.   I don't think the word we had missed would have come easily, so probably a good decision.

[Langue_doc]

The last two words were cirri and caviar. I got cirri by typing letters at random and then saw caviar with the letters neatly laid out around the 'r'.  I found archival even before getting to solid.

What are the programs you're using to find the missing words?

[ab_grp]

Ah, cirri is one of those in my "don't forget words that end with i" list.  Cirri, cocci, croci, etc.  There are so many that we get in one puzzle and then totally miss in another.  I think I got archival and then archrival soon after, or vice versa, but I'm not sure I would have found chivalric if you hadn't noted that there were three pangrams.

Husband and I each wrote programs in our "native languages" (mine is R), just as kind of a fun thing to do.  I am too rusty with R these days, so I figured it would be motivation to get back a few basic skills, at least.  My program makes a list of all possible 4 to 9 letter sequences consisting of subsets of the letter list with middle letter required and then checks against a dictionary to identify what it considers to be words.  Then I run subsets of the full list (regardless of whether they are words) against the word list I've accumulated from previous spelling bees.  I guess we could just look at the answers online, but maybe I'll eventually have enough words in my database that I won't need to.  Husband's program works a little differently.  To my thinking, his program basically scores the full dictionary (different dictionary than mine) and outputs any letter sequences that have the middle letter, > 3 letters, subsets of the letter list.  So, he gets a much longer list out of it, but it also tends to be able to capture all the words in the puzzle, whereas my approach doesn't always.  We run my first part (dictionary), then second (my word bank), then his if the list is not too long.  I'm not sure there is much point to this exercise, but if I don't get to QB one way or the other I tend to keep thinking about it all day.  Unfortunately, we can't find the exact dictionary that they use for the bee.  That would make life easier.

[Langue_doc]

Thanks for the detailed information. I'm not technologically savvy, alas, but will look into writing a similar program. I usually stop when I reach genius, unless I feel motivated or find the letter combinations intriguing. I don't think I have any energy tonight to look for more words.

[ab_grp]

I can't stop, or as I mentioned I will keep spinning the wheel in my head.  If you would like my admittedly crap and inelegant program, just PM me or something! I made it better through several stages, but then the ROI was incremental, so I stopped.  It's still pretty short and uses a dictionary package, so no need to add anything unless you want to do step 2 or want a bigger dictionary.  I never got to the point of trying to add other dictionaries because I used the online answers to supplement my step 2 database if I missed anything.  It's still not totally comprehensive, but you get what you pay for!

ETA: I could post the relevant code here, too.  It will be a drag, but maybe it will be useful.