It feels like you’ve got a legal performance-enhancing substance in you. You have to learn how to recognize the difference.ĥ) Savor doing it the hard way. I love starting with the pangram. Seeing LAUGH wasn’t instinctive but illusory. I got “genius” that day, first doing it without the pangram, and there was no “UGH” word at all. I kept seeing LAUGH, which didn’t use the key letter. ![]() ![]() One puzzle presented A G H L U P around a center M. It’s there.Ĥ) Overcome illusions. Sometimes, you see things that aren’t there. If you feel an answer but don’t know it yet, trust that feeling. It happened way faster than I can describe it. That usually means one part of the word uses the center letter and the other doesn’t, so it’s a cue to look for a word with the outside letters. In the puzzle I just referenced, I just knew to look for compound words. After doing about 150 of these puzzles, I can almost always tell if the pangram is a compound word as soon as I look at the puzzle. Wrong words lead to right ones.ģ) Trust your instincts. Your mind often knows the answer before you’re consciously aware of it. Writing some random combinations like BALONE helped me see BALLOON - obvious perhaps, but it didn’t reveal itself to me. I wanted to write BALONEY, but there was no Y. But sometimes, mistakes reveal a new possibility. Once in a while, you get a surprise and learn something is a real word. Then I got stuck, as usual, several levels from “genius.” I started making up some words. Often, I look for the pangram first to see if it jumps out, and ANKLEBONE was staring right at me. I got some good ones (and yes, I’ll spoil this one). As I write this, the day’s Bee puzzle has the letters O E A B K N with L at the center. You don’t need to go for a walk in the woods or spend an hour doing yoga (good for you if you do either) go about your day and return later, and you’ll often surprise yourself.Ģ) Make mistakes on purpose to learn from them. And then a couple of hours later, I’ll see other ones still. While certain days are brutal to get through, most days, once I reach a stopping point, I return hours later and then instantly see new words. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this play out so literally as it always does with Spelling Bee. Now that you know how to play, here are a few things I’ve learned from Bee keeping:ġ) Give your mind a break. It seems like a cliché that when you give your mind a chance to solve problems in the background, it comes up with new ideas. Play the latest puzzle online or your phone though so you can see how you score. That day, I found 34 words, reaching “genius” with 180 points. The required score for “genius” varies daily based on the total number of words and points in the puzzle.įor the puzzle above, I won’t give away the answers in case you’re determined to try it yourself. You get seven extra points if you find a pangram, but you can reach the ninth and final scoring level without it. The money word is the “pangram,” a term which normally refers to a sentence or verse using every letter of the alphabet but here refers to one using every letter. In the example below, TOP doesn’t work (too short), nor does TOAD (missing center letter), nor DOTPIN (I just made up that one) Your goal: make as many words as possible of at least four letters which all use the central letter. Below, from a recent example, are the letters N, T, O, A, D, and I around the center letter P. The format is always the same: six letters surround a seventh in a honeycomb shape. Below, I’ll share some lessons that Bee players can apply to other areas of their work and lives.įirst, though, here’s a tutorial. It’s become one of those quarantine habits of mine, but the game’s been around for years, and I happened to discover it in March via a house ad on. I’m talking about the game Spelling Bee, a simple but never simplistic game from The New York Times. ![]() When you master it, you’re called a “genius.” Then at 3am EDT, it resets, and you may struggle for the next 24 hours. Some days, you might not even get very far. ![]() It’s so simple, and yet it can take all day.
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