Words
From the bookshelf. Rereading/relistening to Rivers of London. My comfort read of the moment.
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Finally achieved a second perfect month with the NYT Crosswords. It only took me two years. [2019, 2020-almost]
I would also recommend the NYT Spelling Bee. I have always been terrible with anagrams. I can barely find three-letter words in Scrabble. Possibly from being traumatized at an early age by my paternal grandmother who could have Scrabbled for her country. Yes, I’ve tried since. Wasn’t pretty. I am so bad at anagrams that I simply skip them when they show up in crosswords and hope I can find the answers from the cross clues. Despite my previous inability with the form, I’m having great luck finding words with Spelling Bee. Possibly the non-linear arrangement. Possibly the ability to repeat letters. Dunno how much is accessible without an account.
ntybee.com: NYT Spelling Bee Answers and Analysis. While I usually get to the top scoring level, I rarely get ALL the words. So, I have created an intermediate goal of getting all the pangrams and all the four-letter words. I use this to find out the word-count distribution. An unofficial fan page?
NYT: The Genius of Spelling Bee by Amlen, Nov 2020. Update. Explains the origin of the nytbee site. I admit, I did not read it completely before posting. I figured a NYT article on a NYT puzzle would not go too far astray. I did make a point of finishing it before the day was over. #HowTheSausageIsMade
Slate: The NYT Spelling Bee Gives Me L-I-F-E, by Lippman, Feb 2020
Speaking of Scrabble. Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players by Stefan Fatsis (Houghton Mifflin 2001). Mentioned before. Worth repeating. [Writing Rules, Writing Life]
What word games keep you amused?
Stay safe. Stay safe.
Katherine
I write word-search puzzles professionally, and have found over the years I’m not really interested in working other puzzles, regardless of type. Word search are easy to solve if you think of the letters as shapes, and look for that combination of shapes in the grid.