On the S in Spelling Bee
“Why does the Bee never use the letter S? It is a very common letter with multiple uses. And you can’t eliminate it because of the use in plurals! Consider how often you use -ED and -ING. It would add a lot to the fun.” — Tim McFadden, Encinitas, Calif. From Christina: When picking the letters for any Spelling Bee puzzle, my colleague Sam Ezersky has the goal of creating a puzzle that’s fun to solve. For those of you who haven’t played Spelling Bee, each puzzle has a set of seven letters arranged with one in the center and the other six around it. Solvers have to find as many words as they can, but every word must use the central letter, and the words have to be at least four letters long. Every puzzle has at least one answer that uses all seven letters, called the pangram. So, what makes a fun puzzle? It’s all about balance — if Sam used too many common letters, the puzzle would become tedious to solve. There are sets of letters that he has ruled out because the number of possible words is just too high. For instance, E, A, D, L, N, P, T (with E in the center) would lead to a puzzle with 237 words. With our scoring system, solvers would have to get 955 points before they reached “Genius.” Other letter sets have been ruled out because they don’t have enough words. The set Z, E, G, I, L, N, T (with a central Z) yields only 10 possible words. Oddly, four of them are pangrams, using all four letters: Genteelize, Genteelizing, Gentilize and Gentilizing. Most of the puzzles that Sam runs have somewhere in the range of 30 to 60 words, with a few exceptions. The other main reason a letter set is rejected is that the pangrams are too obscure — words like “Unfixity” or “Cytokinin.” For many years, the letter S was never featured, but this year, that changed. We now have run two S puzzles, one on April Fools’ Day, and one on the day after Labor Day, with the pangram SCHOOLBOOK — timed with the first day of school for many students. I spoke to Sam about this decision, and he said: “I always worried about an S feeling repetitive. For so many nouns and verbs in a given puzzle, you’d also have to enter their -S counterparts. And even if this wouldn’t feel tedious from the solving side, it’d be tricky to offer a good set of letters that didn’t yield too many words. (I have trouble with this already, without the S!) That said, solvers have been clamoring for the S for years. After all, I began offering (similarly repetitive) -ING and -ED puzzles in 2020, which many find enjoyable. So … why not try something new from time to time?”
Solve Friday’s Crossword on Easy Mode!
In today’s Wordplay column, Deb Amlen writes her retirement note. Read it for expert hints on today’s puzzle. Were you able to solve the Friday puzzle with Easy Mode? We want your input! Share your experience with us on the X platform, on Threads or by email. A Quick Cool-DownHow fast can you solve today’s Mini?
Get a ClueMy favorite clue from last week is 54-Down from Saturday, Dec. 27. It helps if you say “wind” with a short I instead of a long one. 54-Down: Wind-up toy?
How are we doing? Thanks for playing! Subscribe to New York Times Games. If you were forwarded this newsletter, you can sign up to receive it regularly here. P.S. The answer to Get a Clue is KITE.
|
