Diary of a Spelling Bee Fanatic for the Week of July 24, 2023.

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Entries for the week of July 24, 2023.

By Deb Amlen

This is Diary of a Spelling Bee Fanatic, a weekly review of the game that drives me out of my hivemind. In a good way. Sometimes. It is probably also worth mentioning that the Diary is a work of fiction.

Read past Diary entries here, and join the daily discussion in the forum.

“Where did you say we were going?”

Sam Ezersky, the Spelling Bee editor, hops into my car, and I start driving to the “restaurant” we are supposedly going to for lunch. I’m nervous and hoping that when Sam finds out that we are really heading to a gathering of my Spelling Bee therapy group and other parties interested in finding out how his mind works, he will not leap out of the car.

“We’re having lunch, silly, remember?” I ask, passing him a brown paper bag with the hand that is not white-knuckling the steering wheel. Inside is a sandwich and a cold drink. Never say that I don’t keep my promises.

“This is the lunch?” Sam asks. “I thought you said we were going to a restaurant.”

“We’re making a stop first.”

I pull into the parking lot of the therapist’s office, and we walk inside. As Sam’s eyes adjust to being indoors, he looks around and sees a room full of people he’s never met before.

“What’s going on?” Sam asks. He looks bewildered.

“Hi, Sam,” the therapist says warmly. “Come in and take a seat.”

“The people here care about you, Sam,” the therapist continues, “and they want very much to see you succeed.”

“I’m not succeeding?” my poor colleague asks, confused.

“Sam,” the therapist says, “the people in this room have written personal statements about how the words you allow and don’t allow in the Bee have affected them. They would like to read them to you.”

Jonah, my 8-year-old neighbor, has been allowed to skip school to attend the meeting, so the group agrees that he can go first. He stands up and pulls a crumpled piece of loose-leaf paper from his pocket.

“Mr. Ezersky,” Jonah begins, reading from the paper, “my friends and I are really big fans of yours. We play Spelling Bee every day in school, and we like the game a lot —”

“Wait,” Sam asks me, “is this the ‘poopy’ kid?” I nod and point at Jonah to redirect him.

“But we are very disappointed that ‘poop’ and ‘pooping’ are accepted,” Jonah continues, “while ‘poopy’ is not. We’ve also broken at least two teachers because we now ask a lot of questions about words that they can’t answer.”

“You can’t blame me for that,” Sam says. Everyone shushes him.

“In order for my friends and I to keep playing the game,” Jonah reads, “we ask you to put the word ‘poopy’ on the list of accepted words.”

“Not going to happen,” Sam says. I notice that his arms are crossed in a defensive position. “I could get fired,” he adds, looking around the room for sympathy. Mrs. Needleman smiles at him and hands him a peppermint candy.

“Sam, before you make any decisions about the game, maybe you should hear everyone out,” the therapist says. “Your fans love you, and they just want the best for you.”

Mrs. Needleman shyly raises her hand. “May I go next, please?” she asks. “I have so much I want to say to Sam.”

(To be continued next week.)

BRONINI: A pressed sandwich sprinkled with protein powder for the gym bros.

If I had to choose a favorite solving hack, I think it would be taking full advantage of the letters -ING when they appear in the hive. It’s easy to rack up extra points by simply hooking those letters onto the end of an accepted word.

Occasionally, however, I try to force the issue, which drives my husband up a wall.

“Surely ‘hilting’ is a word,” I say, with a bit of righteous indignation as I rotate today’s hive.

“Use it in a sentence,” he says as a challenge.

“‘I am finished using my sword, so I am hilting it back into its scabbard,’” I respond after thinking about it for a moment. I try not to show how unsure I really am.

“That’s not a thing,” my husband says. “The HILT is the handle, so you wouldn’t be ‘hilting’ it anywhere.”

“‘Trigging,’ now that’s a word that should have been accepted,” he continues as he types words into the hive.

“What on earth is ‘trigging’?” I ask.

“Don’t Americans use that term?” he asks. My husband is of British descent by way of South Africa, so we have all sorts of “How can you not know that?” conversations about American English vs. British English.

“Is it about my attempts to pass a certain high school math class?” I ask. “As in, ‘I’m trigging as hard as I can’?”

“Nope,” my husband laughs. “It means making yourself look sharp and neat in terms of your appearance, like when we get dressed up to go out.”

“I’m not sure I clean up well enough to meet a standard of actual trigging.”

“Me neither,” he admits. “But it would have earned us another eight points.”

I love it when a puzzle evokes good memories or favorite pieces of pop culture. While today’s pangram is UNLOVELY, the word LOVELY is also accepted, which reminded me of one of my favorite Stevie Wonder songs.

ONLYYELL: A website where subscribers pay to hear people yell at them.

Join us here to solve crosswords, the Mini and other games by The New York Times.

Deb Amlen, the crossword columnist and senior staff editor of Wordplay, believes that everyone can learn to solve the Times crossword. She is the author of the humor book, “It's Not P.M.S., It's You.” More about Deb Amlen

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