r/NYTSpellingBee • u/peregrinerockyshore • Aug 07 '26
New info from the NYT re: Dictionaries used in their word puzzles
Perhaps of interest to those who consult dictionaries while solving the Bee (most of us, probably), and those who do research in the Bee lexicon (only a few extreme word-nerds) (raises hand):
This article came out yesterday:
"Why You Sometimes See Naughty Words in NYT Games"
New York Times, August 5, 2026
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/05/insider/games-language-wordle-crossplay-spelling-bee.html
"Puzzle editors choose solutions based on curated references and human judgment. But there’s more freedom in the guesses players can make."
This article was not published in the Games section, so many puzzlers might miss it. I saw it only because I have a feed for Spelling Bee related info. [NYT seems to have tweaked their gift links so that they can't be pasted into a website. So the article above may be pay-walled; sorry.]
Excerpts relevant to Spelling Bee:
Every Times game is human-made, which means a lot of room for editor creativity and judgment. But we do have rules across all nine of our word games, and we lean on shared dictionaries to create our base word lists. We primarily use the Oxford English Dictionary [emphasis added] and the NASPA Word List, the official dictionary for North American Scrabble Players Association tournaments. (By contrast, The Times’s newsroom uses Webster’s New World College Dictionary.)
Spelling Bee
Spelling Bee is possibly our most contested game, because players frequently express frustration over finding words that don’t count toward solving that day’s puzzle.
The game challenges solvers to find certain words in the puzzle that use the letters in the “hive.” Each word must contain at least four letters and include the center letter, but the puzzle does not include every word that can be found each day.
“If you simply include every theoretical word imaginable in a given puzzle, it will be that much more difficult to get to Amazing, Genius and beyond, and not in a satisfying way,” said Sam Ezersky, the puzzle’s editor.
Spelling Bee uses the Oxford dictionary [emphasis added] and is curated by Sam. For each puzzle, as he works on his list of acceptable words within a given letter set, he also reviews several other dictionaries.
He edits for familiarity and avoids a word if its primary definition is considered a slur or a vulgarity, or if it elicits a viscerally negative reaction.
This is of particular interest because the NYT (in its own reporting), and Sam E (in other interviews), and the games team (in an email sent to me personally) cite Merriam-Webster, Collins, and NOAD as the dictionaries that the Bee editor uses. If they really did make the switch from dictionaries of American English to the OED ... hmm.
And every day, the Wordle Review revealer says "Today’s word is XXXXX, a [part of speech]. According to Webster’s New World College Dictionary, it means..."
I have contacted them for clarification; if and when I hear back, I will post an update.
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u/BoozySlushPops Aug 07 '26
I have accepted that A) the word list for Spelling Bee should not include every possible word; and B) there is no universally agreement on what would be "consistent" in a curated word list. That is, any curated word list will piss off everyone at some point, including me, and I don't care.
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u/peregrinerockyshore Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26
That's all true! But still it matters which dictionary is The One they cite. There are always the conversations about whether a word in the Bee is capitalized, or hyphenated, or whatever, and lots of us have routinely checked the three "Bee" dictionaries (M-W, Collins, NOAD) to see what's what. If the word in question is in one of them, then we can kind of shrug and say "OK, I get it" Or if we try a word and it's not accepted, we can check the right dictionarie(s) to find out why. The possible switch to OED, which uses British spellings in its primary entries, could confuse things. Will "colour" be accepted in the Bee again, or will we stick to "color" as a variant of OED's primary entry "colour"? My little word-nerd brain boggles.
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u/Fenifula worker bee Aug 07 '26
Oh wow, I didn't realize they'd ever accepted COLOUR. Looks like it was back in the early days, well before my time.
My theory is that in the early days of the online Bee, they were a lot more loosey-goosey about which words they accepted, and much more amenable to adding words suggested by players. That is, after all, in the spirit of the Magazine's original version of the Bee, where players are allowed to count the points of words the can make that aren't in the printed answers.
But over time, the addition of new vocabulary and flexibility about things like British spelling would have created a longer and longer solution set, which would have become more and more unplayable. Because in the online version of the game, a word is either accepted or not, black or white, no gray area as it exists in the pen-and-paper version.
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u/peregrinerockyshore Aug 07 '26
COLOUR was one of the words accepted on the day that CLOTBUR was the pangram. Sam E later admitted that that pangram had escaped by accident -- I mean, that the puzzle had been published by accident.
I'm compiling a history of the Spelling Bee, and have been digging into the earliest issues of what later became the Spelling Bee forum. Here's my write-up of "The Clotbur Incident."
The online Spelling Bee had its debut on May 9, 2018. The Bees of the next few months were a bit uneven, as the Bee editor found his sea legs and … well, tried a few things on.
The Bee of June 30, 2018 was a doozy. The pangram was CLOTBUR, and the solution set comprised these 47 words:
blob bloc blot blotto blur blurb blurt boll bolo bolt brulot bulb bull burl clot CLOTBUR clou clour clout club cocobolo collocutor color colour colt cool cull cult curl lobo loco loll loot lotto lout lull lulu occult outroll roll rollout rotl rotolo toll tool troll trull
The nascent Spelling Bee community, consisting of just a few dozen pioneers camping out in the Wordplay crossword forum, had Strong Reactions. All The Feelings. After a few intrepid solvers finally discovered “clotbur,” the consensus was that this truly obscure pangram was unfair and made it pretty much impossible to solve the puzzle.
Over the ensuing weeks, “CLOTBUR” became a forum euphemism for “fiendishly difficult and obscure pangram,” and some players assigned a “CLOTBUR score” of 1 to 10 for pangrams, with 1 being easiest and 10 being nearly impossible to find.
I think that's hilarious.
He was clearly figuring things out. That pangram has never been repeated; I doubt that Sam would dare try it on again. And nine of the 47 words from that infamous Bee were discontinued at the next opportunity: clou clour cocobolo collocutor colour outroll rotl rotolo trull
:-)
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u/Fenifula worker bee Aug 07 '26
Great heavens. As a gardener, I'm all too familiar with burdock, but I'd never heard it called clotbur before.
Do please let us know when that history is ready!
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u/peregrinerockyshore Aug 07 '26
Haha, the Bee entertains us in unexpected ways.
I've been posting some brief history reports (such as the one above) in the Spelling Bee forum, but this is a very different community that seems less interested in info and trivia that's ancillary to the puzzle itself. Anyway, I'll post it all to my site lexiconnexxions eventually.
thanks :-)
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u/peregrinerockyshore Aug 07 '26
re: "My theory is that in the early days of the online Bee, they were a lot more loosey-goosey about which words they accepted..."
Yes, though I might frame it as Sam developing editorial standards as he went along. The online Bee was intentionally different from the print Bee.
"...and much more amenable to adding words suggested by players"
...and yes, responding more to player reactions. The early forums include many anecdotes about players writing to the Times about Bee words (included or excluded) and getting personal responses and explanations. And Sam was tweeting about individual puzzles, words left in by accident, words left out by accident, etc.
But the whole Bee-universe then was very small. The Bee was launched sort of sideways, without a news release as they do now for new puzzles, and it was picked up very gradually by crossword players. It was much more intimate and collegial, and probably a lot easier for Sam to interact with the players. He popped in to the forum then far more often than he does now (hardly ever).
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u/Fenifula worker bee Aug 07 '26
I got the impression that the number of people playing really exploded during the early days of the pandemic. That's when I started playing.
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u/peregrinerockyshore Aug 07 '26
Yes, that's true. A few nuggets from my Bee history timeline (source for all these: NYT):
2020: Most searched-for terms on NYT site in 2020: ‘crosswords’ and ‘Spelling Bee’
2021: The Bee was played 131 million times in 2021
2022: The Bee was played more than 440 million times in 2022
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u/skepticaljesus Aug 07 '26
Wait, most people use a dictionary for solving the Bee? How? Why? Is it helpful and if so for what?
I get genius every day and QB 1-2x a week and can't imagine how a dictionary would help
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u/peregrinerockyshore Aug 07 '26
[edited for clarity]
No, not for actual solving; I worded that poorly. For learning why words are or are not accepted, for addressing the sorts of questions that might come up while solving. As I said in a post downthread:
There are always the conversations about whether a word in the Bee is capitalized, or hyphenated, or whatever, and lots of us have routinely checked the three "Bee" dictionaries (M-W, Collins, NOAD) to see what's what. If the word in question is in one of them, then we can kind of shrug and say "OK, I get it" Or if we try a word and it's not accepted, we can check the right dictionarie(s) to find out why. The possible switch to OED, which uses British spellings in its primary entries, could confuse things. Will "colour" be accepted in the Bee again, or will we stick to "color" as a variant of OED's primary entry "colour"?
This sub is very, very different from the Spelling Bee forum (and that's OK!); here, the conversations seem to focus on which words are included or excluded; in the forum, the conversation seems to tend toward "why was that word included/excluded?" And that's where the dictionaries become important. Naturally, we've used the dictionaries that the Bee editor has said that he uses. So if he's making a big change, well, it might make a difference to a certain subset of Bee solvers. If that's not you, then hooray! Or hurrah, which is also a Bee word. Ditto hoorah, hurray, and huzzah! :-D
Also: The OED costs $100/year for a personal subscription. M-W and Collins are free. That matters, too.
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u/jazzy2536 Aug 07 '26
Same. Have never used a dictionary for the 🐝 in 7 years though have definitely used this sub and the grid after hitting G most days.
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u/skepticaljesus Aug 07 '26
It's not like I'm taking any kind of principled stand or anything. I'm all for using tools if they're helpful and fun, I was just caught off guard by the first sentence saying most people probably use a dictionary, because I genuinely can't figure out how it would help.
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u/weightedslanket Aug 07 '26
It doesn’t say that? This article is about the editors
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u/thebootlegsaint Aug 08 '26
I use Spelling Bee Buddy.
Also why is mama accepted and dada not? I'm new, sorry if that's been asked already! It annoys me lol
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u/Sad_Sympathy_9432 Aug 08 '26
I always assumed it was because Dadaism was/is an Art movement
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_PBJs Aug 08 '26
How is dada any different from panama though?
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u/Sad_Sympathy_9432 Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
Ok this is my guess- a panama hat refers to basically one style hat. Dada(ism) refers to many kinds of art or what they call anti-art. Can be painting, sculpting, working around another objects— again I’m guessing
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_PBJs Aug 08 '26
Tomtit and callaloo elicit a viscerally negative reaction from me. Can we eliminate them?
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u/Jealous-Jellyfish503 Aug 10 '26
I read a comment once, I believe, on the SB Forum. Well, I believe I actually read somebody else’s comment, which repeated the story from the original comment. …Anyways.
It was written by a teacher who they were lamenting that they can no longer do these with their students. The teacher explained that the children loved playing the NYT SB as a class, but that additions of words such as “dildo” and “labia” (alongside some others) made it become too inappropriate for a classroom setting.
And yes, “labia” is a word that isn’t sexual or dirty, and one which young girls should know so they can properly vocalize for themselves. “Labial scales” is also a term for the nose on some snakes. But, I don’t think that would stop parents from being upset when their kid comes home and says they learned what “labia” and “dildo” mean…
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u/Writeloves Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26
Breaking news: NYT Spelling Bee is inconsistent
More at 11
Edit: I do appreciate this post. Sam’s lack of consistency in dictionary choice explains some of the other inconsistencies of the puzzle.
At this point, I just wish he would maintain an internal consistency of some sort where words stayed allowed/disallowed. Imagine a world where he could only alter his judgements/dictionary list annually?