Maybe Ezersky had, though? And he appeared to have some obscure but inconsistent knowledge of fauna and flora - he accepted “loblolly,” the tree, but not “javelina” or “anole.” I guessed he wasn’t much of a coder “boolean” wasn’t a valid word. “Ramada” was a valid word - I only knew it in the context of the hotel chain, but I learned ramadas are roofed shelters with open sides and are common in the southwest, a part of the country I regrettably haven’t spent much time in. I started to see all Spelling Bee words through the lens of Ezersky. I don’t know anything about Ezersky as a person, but it made sense to me that a city-dwelling man of his age might not be familiar with deglazing I know I wasn’t until I started cooking more in my thirties. Ezersky seemed to have a sense of humor about his role: when hordes of angry Spelling Bee fans (who he calls the #HiveMind) came at him for rejecting the word “deglaze” on a puzzle, he tweeted puns to acknowledge the omission. Who is the great arbiter of Spelling Bee words? Google told me it was a man named Sam Ezersky, a mid-20s puzzle editor living in the greater New York area. “Pika” - a common animal! - was invalid, while “yegg” - a slangy nickname for a safecracker - was valid. “CAPTCHA” was invalid one week, but then valid a few weeks later. Then, I started noticing what I felt were inconsistencies in words that were and weren’t accepted, and began adding those to a list. The official Spelling Bee rules are vague about its terms for inclusion the only official rules are no cussing, and no “obscure, hyphenated, or proper nouns.” At first, my friends and I swapped screenshots of great valid words (cicada, riparian) and fun invalid words (Dorito, Jumanji, yeet). Part of the fun of the game is sharing silly words with other word nerds and complaining about which words are and are not accepted. I have become so dependent on this habit of mine that last weekend, upon waking up in the forest, I realized I had no reception and felt a twinge of disappointment that I couldn’t do Spelling Bee while drinking my instant coffee. I literally cannot start my day unless I find the pangram, and sometimes take my Spelling Bee prowess as an omen for the day: if the pangram is easy, the day might go well if I’m stuck even after downing my coffee, I sense I’m in for a rough one. As far as I can tell, Spelling Bee does not provide long-term user stats, and this is probably for the best, because I cringe to think about how much time I’ve spent pecking at my screen for random words.
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