NYT Spelling Bee

[Langue_doc]

I was going to give up on LB, but since the two of you got the two-fer, I decided to try for one and got my very own two-fer.

Made it to above genius on SB, but don't feel the urge to complete it. Genius Bee it is for today. I hate it when SB rejects 'clitic', a perfectly legitimate grammatical term. I keep trying even though I know it's going to be rejected.

[Langue_doc]

Good morning, puzzle aficionados.

Two pangrams in today's bee; made it to genius.

LB--I had the official solution.

Happy solving all!

[ab_grp]

Good morning!

Thanks for the bee info.  I just started wading in, no pangrams yet.  Yeah for genius!  I think we missed coital and alack yesterday.

I'm glad you kept at the LB and got the official solution.   Mine was BUILDS-STATIONARY. 

Time to go jump on the long Sunday crossword and have some coffee and try more bee.  At least I finished the sudokus for today and cleared up all but one outstanding hard sudoku!

[ab_grp]

Well, I was able to get a 2-fer with my first contender.  Whee!

I'm at just about 81% in the bee so better get on the stick and get to Alpha Bee.  That is what the ab in ab_grp stands for, by the way.  ;-) Or something like that.  Only found one pangram so far, though.

Luckily crossword wasn't too bad.

[Langue_doc]

Well, I was able to get a 2-fer with my first contender.  Whee!

I'm at just about 81% in the bee so better get on the stick and get to Alpha Bee.  That is what the ab in ab_grp stands for, by the way.  ;-) Or something like that.  Only found one pangram so far, though.

Luckily crossword wasn't too bad.

Whee on the LB. You'll get to Alpha Bee, ab_grp, and to QB!

I sometimes feel that I just have to keep up with the Joneses, so might work on LB and also try to find more words in SB. The pangrams aren't too difficult, so shuffling the letters would help. I found the relevant one rather late, even though the letters had been staring at me the entire time.

I haven't looked at the crossword yet, but breakfast calls.

[ab_grp]

Thanks! I got a couple more good words, still no second pangram.  I got the relevant one, I believe.  Will keep on shuffling! I sometimes wish you could shuffle within side on the LB or rotate the puzzle keeping the sides intact.  I'm sure if I figured out a 2-fer, you will as well.

Good luck with the crossword.  Even after reading the blog, I'm still not quite sure I understand if there are multiple layers to the theme or not.  And some of the clues/answers... timely in a bad way?

At least I finally finished the 1/8/21 hard sudoku so am now all caught up and ready for when they release tomorrow's this afternoon.   It was hard keeping track of all the unsolved puzzles in the various tabs (I am one of those who has hundreds open, though I do try to go through and close some once in a while).  But they are all complete now!

Enjoy breakfast! We will be eating ours in a bit.

[ciao_yall]

Morning!

I also got builds-stationary. Someone else on the comments board got dinar-robustly.

Off to todays puzzles. Got a 2fr as well. Found a fun word and am bummed it probably isn't a contender but maybe I'll play with it anyway and see what happens.

ETA: Found another 2fer with my fun word. Whee!

[ab_grp]

Wow, two 2-fers! I wonder if your second set is the same as mine, as I consider one of the words to be fun.  Not the other one.   Congrats!

I made husband hold off on comparing lists until I got another word to get to alpha bee.  Got it, we compared, and we got to QB.  But I didn't get there by myself.  I will take the alpha bee, at least.  He had the other pangram and a word I just keep on missing, somewhat ironically.

[cathwen]

Two 2-fers!  Wow, ciao_yall! 

I got a 2-fer today on my second try, which is definitely a record for me.  Yesterday I had some great words, but none that fit together.   I decided to take a break, but didn't get back to it.

I made genius in SB and even got the two pangrams for 190 points; not glorious, but a little above the minimum.  For now, I'm happy enough with that.  Congratulations, ab_grp, but making QB!

Off to solve the crossword!

[Langue_doc]

Thanks! I got a couple more good words, still no second pangram.  I got the relevant one, I believe.  Will keep on shuffling! I sometimes wish you could shuffle within side on the LB or rotate the puzzle keeping the sides intact.  I'm sure if I figured out a 2-fer, you will as well.

Good luck with the crossword. Even after reading the blog, I'm still not quite sure I understand if there are multiple layers to the theme or not.  And some of the clues/answers... timely in a bad way?

At least I finally finished the 1/8/21 hard sudoku so am now all caught up and ready for when they release tomorrow's this afternoon.   It was hard keeping track of all the unsolved puzzles in the various tabs (I am one of those who has hundreds open, though I do try to go through and close some once in a while).  But they are all complete now!

Enjoy breakfast! We will be eating ours in a bit.

The crossword was time-consuming, but otherwise straightforward. The John Donne quote is the one most people are familiar with, as is the title of the performance at the MET. I got stuck on several of the smaller words but managed to solve the puzzle in an hour. 72A is something I would say to the class after handling a digression or irrelevant question.

Congrats all on the two-fers! I got mine. Found a fun word, but couldn't fit the other letters into a word. So my two-fer is just a run-of-the-mill set of words.

Incidentally, LB accepts "coir"--I tried it out just to see if it would be accepted by LB. This is a word that SB consistently rejects.

I don't think I'll be spending much more time on SB. Sudokus were completed last night.

[ab_grp]

Thanks, Cathwen, but I only got alpha bee on my own.  QB was a team effort! But I will try again for QB tomorrow.  Congrats on genius + and the quick 2-fer! Have fun with the crossword.

Congrats on your 2-fer, Langue_doc, whatever the solution.  It is frustrating at times to have different NYT puzzles accept different words! I took a look at my crossword stats and am now a little confused.  It says my average Sunday is about 34 minutes, my fastest was about 14.  But it does not have today's in the stats as the Sunday of this week, even though I did clearly finish the puzzle today, in about 18.  Actually, now I'm wondering how it thinks of "this week".  I thought maybe it was because the Monday puzzle is already out and it thinks it has started on a new week.  Usually Sunday is considered the start of the week, so today's should be in "this week"? But I see they start the stats from left to right at Monday and end on Sunday, so maybe they have a different week than I do.  I guess I never thought of weeks in crossword time.  Maybe it makes sense that they progress in difficulty from Mon-Sat and then you have Sunday, which I think they say is more like a Thursday, but not a Monday.  Sorry I got off track there.  I didn't think the 1/10/21 puzzle was tricky, but I am not always a fan of themes that you don't really need to even take a look at to solve the puzzle and that don't add much enjoyment.  My downfall was the names like 21A.  Tomorrow's should be pretty quick.

I got tomorrow's easy and medium sudokus completed without issue and in reasonable times but am stuck on hard and am calling it a day!

Congrats all around of the great Sunday solving!

[ciao_yall]

Does anyone else do the variety puzzles in the Sunday magazine?

I love "Split Decisions." Almost finished except for the first word in the top left row. About to get my trusty 1979 dictionary out to see which words might fit.

LB - my second 2fer was the official solution: scowled-daiquiri. I first got acquired-dowels. Suspect there were a lot of options.

On to today's...

[ab_grp]

Good morning!

I got the daiquiri 2-fer, too.  I was so excited to make that work!  As for the magazine puzzles, I don't get the paper but checked the puzzle mania and see Split Decisions in there.  Yikes! That looks challenging.  I'll have to give it a try when I finally get my office cleared up enough to be able to spread that whole section out.

Just got up a bit ago, haven't been sleeping well.  Got a pangram right away, fortunately, but another long puzzle.  Looking forward to easy crossword and trying to solve the rest of today's hard sudoku.  And LB, of course!

[Parasaurolophus]

Haven't seen today's pangram yet!

Yesterday, it still wasn't accepting 'rota' or 'atlatl'.

[Langue_doc]

The pangram is a word that we're all familiar with. I wouldn't be surprised to see a second one given the number of points needed for genius. Made it to genius though.

As for LB, my words were scowled, dowel; I found daiquiri, but as the first word.

Completed the crosswords and sudokus last night. I've also been playing the vertex puzzles as I find that they are soothing to the brain. It takes me several short sessions to complete them. Yesterday's was a hummingbird. Today's is a mundane object that we're all familiar with and probably use.