NYT Spelling Bee

[ciao_yall]

PM me - I'll share hints if anyone wants. My solution is a bit clunky so might not be the official but I was never a 4.0 student either.

cathwen I do that too. The other day I wandered away from my phone. The panagram was LOGOPHILE but I hadn't gotten it yet, was still turning the letters around in my mind. Then I jumped up, startling my husband and yelled "PIGEONHOLE!" Grabbed my phone all proud of myself... yeah, no N.

Would have been such a great word.

[ab_grp]

I PMed you, ciao_yall, and I included my contenders but put some lines before them so hopefully you don't have to see them inadvertently if you don't want to. 

And I also see lots of words that would be in the bee if there were just this letter or that.  Having an idea spring into your head and then getting back to the puzzle excitedly and realizing not all your letters there is argh.

ETA: Okay, many thanks to ciao_yall, I think I have found that solution for the LB! It works and seems to fit the clues.  Yay!

[Langue_doc]

I'm still stuck at a few points above Genius. Like cathwen, I also see words that contain letters not in the puzzle. Today I kept finding words with r in them! If only SB would accept proper nouns, I'd be an empress several times over, especially today.

Congrats to all of you who found the solutions and made it to QB and the two-fers. I'm probably giving up on today's SB and LB.

[Langue_doc]

Good morning SB and LB aficionados! Got the official solution to LB, rather late at night. My initial word was backyards; I thought the s would help get the second word, but no such luck. I then tried backlash, and lo and behold, the rest of the letters spelled out the second word.

As for SB, manhattan!!! mahatma!!!  I'd assumed that the latter was an honorific and although a common noun in another language, was used in English with the first letter capitalized, as in Mahatma Gandhi. Oh, well. Both words for me are proper nouns--I wasn't thinking of spirits. Made it to amazing today with the pangram.

The crossword was an easy one, which I managed to complete before retiring.

I might not be posting today or tomorrow, so Merry Christmas if you celebrate/observe the holiday, otherwise happy not-having-to-work day. I'm not doing my usual spending Christmas with family/friends as everyone I know is observing the"households" only advisory. It will be a quiet Christmas with phone calls and zooms, and a break from the internet (I hope).

[ab_grp]

Good morning, Langue_doc and all! Hooray on getting the 2-fer.  Without ciao_yall's help, I probably wouldn't have.  I thought about hydra but not hydraulic and was also stuck on backyards as my main contender.  Couldn't figure out what to make out of the remaining letters.  I also had barback and brushback but didn't think of backlash until I got hydraulic from the clues. 

Husband got manhattan and mahatma yesterday.  He had found mahatma in a previous puzzle, but I never see those words, or I ignore them because what is accepted is so inconsistent.  I do try proper names now just in case, but Montana is apparently nothing more than a state.  For today's, I have about 20 points to go, but it is a tough one for me.  There are a couple words I was happy to recognize as ones I had missed previously.  After husband gets to genius, maybe he will have some extra words for me.

The crossword was definitely not too bad for a Thursday.  Thursdays seem to be the trick days.  The trickiest that I have come across was Change of Heart from September 11, 2014, also a Thursday.  If you haven't tried that one, good luck if you do.  It was apparently the most-discussed puzzle at the Lollapuzzoola 7 tournament (according to puzzle description) and has 365 comments in the blog. 

I also realized yesterday that there is more to sudoku patterns than I had initially found by googling and now understand better about what cathwen was referring to.  I found some tutorials and solving videos so might try watching some of those and working on my sudoku skills a bit.  I have never been good at them and want to work to get better at seeing the patterns, which I never knew existed.  I just thought you had to try numbers iteratively until a solution worked. 

Haven't looked at LB yet today, other than to see what the official solution was yesterday.

Hope you have a very Merry Christmas and enjoy your internet down time after your phone calls and zooms, Langue_doc! We don't even have our tree up yet, as it's hard to feel like it's actually Christmas already.  Hopefully we will get moving on the cheer.   Without much on the agenda, I'll probably be around about as much as any day or days. 

[ciao_yall]

SB: Yesterday - OOMPH? Really? Today, already got the panagram.

LB - Looks like we all got the official solution yesterday. Onward to today's...

[ab_grp]

SB: Yesterday - OOMPH? Really? Today, already got the panagram.

Oh yeah! Yesterday I remembered oomph because I had missed it previously.   I tried oompahpah but not OOMPAH gosh darnit.  The other day I missed "momma" of all things.  And hooray on the pangram!

[ciao_yall]

LB - same side thing is driving me batty today.

ETA - finally got a 3-fer, so hope a 2-fer THAT WORKS will emerge soon. Grr...

[ab_grp]

Good luck, ciao_yall! What I wouldn't give for an H today.

[ab_grp]

Still no real luck with LB, but I managed to solve the medium and hard sudokus today.  Of course, they each took about an hour (over the course of the day), but I had learned a new approach and wanted to try it out. 

Oh, and after comparing on the bee we were missing 6 points for QB and probably should have gotten the remaining word.  Oh well, close!

[ciao_yall]

Would have a 2-fer if it wasn't for the same-side thing.

Slow going today.

[ab_grp]

Finally got a 2-fer!! Whew.

[ciao_yall]

ab_grp was it the official one? I never got there. Would have had lounges-simplify but for the darn same side thing.

Onward to todays!

[ciao_yall]

Easy 2-fer today.

Back to SB... ran out of coffee at Amazing so on a refill now.

[ab_grp]

Yes, it was the official solution.  I got gypsum and then, thankfully, saw lifelong in the remaining letters and crossed my fingers! Congrats on the 2-fer today.  I have some contenders that I'm working with.  The same side stuff is an obstacle to an obvious 2-fer.  Hopefully I'll get there.

For the bee, we got to within 7 points of QB after comparing and then probably wouldn't have gotten the last word. 

I had some time last night when the sudokus came out, so I got the easy done and decided to forge ahead on medium after some wine, so I am still trying to unravel what took place there and try to solve it and then move on to hard.  At least the crossword was easy for a Friday!