NYT Spelling Bee

[cathwen]

Good morning!

QBABM yesterday; last word was nunchuk.  I was out of ideas and wondered if nunchuck had an alternate spelling...and voilà. 

Today I have four words to go. 

LB:  I had overfish-hardline.  Ciao_yall, congratulations on getting two solutions!  I have a 2fer today. 

Langue_doc, yes, I do think we vacation in similar locations.  We're in the Green Mountains.  My husband and I walked down to the lake this morning, and what surprised me was not seeing any waterfowl except for one mallard flying by.  I had expected the lake to have a number of them, but it did not.  (Acid rain?)  We saw some "normal" birds, but heard a number of others, including a Louisiana Waterthrush (identified as such by Merlin Bird ID). 

And yes, we're being careful.  Fortunately, there are few other people at the inn, and we've been either staying in our room reading (it has a big, comfy sofa) or walking around outside.  The promised rain has finally arrived, so we'll be inside for a while.

Anyway...happy puzzling!

[Langue_doc]

QB. Last word was a run-of-the-mil word.

Autocorrect just replaced the hyphenated phrase above with 'rumor'. Aargh!  Caught it before posting.

ETA: cathwen, most of the waterfowl are probably migratory, and must have left for home up north. We saw only a few mallards yesterday and three or so cormorants flying overhead. During the last few walks we saw several species of waterfowl, most of which, according to the experienced birders, were wintering in our area and would soon be leaving..

You'll see plenty of warblers though.

I was in a Burlington suburb, with the Green Mountains straight ahead when driving from the hotel to the relatives. I take the throughway to Lake George, and then have stretches with the Adirondacks on my left and the Green Mountains on the right as I'm driving up the country roads. Hope the rain doesn't linger and you have good weather.

[ab_grp]

Good morning/afternoon!

Got to QBABM! Yesterday unkink was the final one.  I needed a 6 and figured I'd look for an un- that went with a word in my list and got lucky.  Doesn't always work out so easily! I also tried every version of the multi-version word I could come up with that could reasonably be a spelling of it, just in case.

I also had silverfish-hardon (or hardons-silverfish).  I'm glad a couple other solutions were found! Congrats on another 2fer today, cathwen!

Rain doesn't sound optimal for a vacation, though the setting does sound very peaceful!

Happy solving!

 

[ab_grp]

Got a 2fer! Fairly normal today.

[Langue_doc]

Good morning!

Genius, but no pangram yet.

Last word yesterday was favor.

Happy solving!

[ciao_yall]

QBwH, last word was froufrou. And moistens-schlump, competitions-shul.

Happy solving!

[ab_grp]

Good morning/afternoon!

Didn't really get started yet due to meetings.  Yesterday my final word was furor.

For LB I had schlump-petition.

I meant to ask if anyone else here thought Sunday's NYT crossword was pretty terrible? I wasn't surprised to see it had 690 or so comments when I looked at it later in the day to see what I was missing.  At one point, I had the correct answers and a gold star, but the timer was still running.  I had to make use of a dumb trick that I never would have known about without the comments to get it to consider it solved.  I imagine a lot of people struggled to get it to be completed in a technical sense, and that is a huge fail in my book.  The trick seemed so random.  I guess I could say what it was by now, but I don't want to ruin anything for anyone who is still planning to attempt that one.

Happy solving!

[cathwen]

Good afternoon!

My last word yesterday was also furor. 

Today I am at Beta, and now I need a break. 

I'm just back from our mini-vacation, so I have to go grocery shopping and do some grading—reception is very poor up in those Green Mountains!  (And the Wi-Fi wasn't as reliable as one would have wished.) 

LB:  I had plutonium-mechs.  I didn't even know that mechs was a word—it was one of those desperation tries.  It apparently refers to bicycle gears. 

Ab_grp, I was also a bit annoyed by the Sunday NYT crossword.  Once I figured out the gimmick, I found it hard to apply in a consistent and predictable manner.  I did solve it, but good grief.

Happy puzzling!

[Parasaurolophus]

GWP.

[Langue_doc]

Good morning!

Three pangrams and genius. I hate the suffix-ending puzzles because they're so repetitive.

Last word yesterday was coyly.

ab_grp, I too found Sunday's crossword to be frustrating. I'll look at the puzzle and give you specifics about the grids and what I came up with. When I looked at the solution the next day and tried to enter what I thought was the correct solution, I once again hit a snag. Some puzzles are just not worth one's time, especially the ones where the compilers try to be tricky and cutesy at the same time (end of vent).

Happy solving!

[ciao_yall]

Morning!

Sunday Crossword - after I was finished I never bothered to figure out the pattern behind the blanks.

QB, needed a hint for codicil. Not a lot of time for LB so declared victory with a 2fer b4ss zounds-snowploughing but later, in the hints for QB found uphold-downsizing.

Happy solving!

[cathwen]

Good morning!

It was a busy day yesterday, and I never did get back to the puzzles.  I had three words left for SB:  diddly, icily, and toll (which I could have sworn I entered—guess not!).  Today I am at Beta with six words to go.  I may need hints, but I'll hang in there for a while.

And no 2fer for LB!  Congratulations, ciao_yall, on yours—I thought that was a difficult puzzle.

Happily, I have a 2fer today.

Happy puzzling!

[Parasaurolophus]

GW3P.

[ab_grp]

Good morning/afternoon!

Got the pangrams and a bit past genius but not by much.  Yesterday I ran out of time with quite a few words left, but we compared right before bed and had team QB, at least. 

No time for LB yesterday, just a couple contenders that didn't add up to much.  Congrats, ciao_yall! And to cathwen on one today!

As for the Sunday crossword, it gave me the gold star and cutely started filling in the blanks with the secret message but didn't stop the clock.  After reading a lot about it on various blogs, I decided to put an X in one of the blanks, and it finally said congratulations.  Why just one of the blanks? Why an X? Would it have worked on any blank? !!!! I hate those kinds of puzzles.  Kind of glad I was not alone in my frustration with it.

Happy solving!

[Langue_doc]

QB. Only one unfamiliar word (for me).

As for the crossword, I had entered 'p' in the grid where 13D and 36A intersected, resulting in two legit words.  I thought I had found the correct letter for each of the other crossings, but apparently not. Then I deleted those letters which left me with blanks. No go. I'd been out most of the day, so decided that my day was well spent, and that since I'd missed solving the crossword around Christmas, Spring break, and Easter, and thus lost the streak, what did I care about being indoors on an electronic device trying to solve a tricky puzzle.

ETA Two-fer!  Taking a break from reviewing drafts of a final paper--the last one is clearly an A paper and most likely an overall A for this student.
Aargh! I hate trying to write sentences on the Kindle, with one finger.

ETA again: ab_grp, what was the secret message? When I looked up the solution the next day those grids contained the word 'nothing', but when I entered this word in the grids, once again, no go.