A Little Variety

Sep 18, 2016 · 13 comments
Mean Old Lady (Conway, Arkansas)
This post is waaaay after the fact, but I never did get illuminati. However, I did have quite a few words not listed: manumit, and manumittal (3 pts) plus mantua, lamina/laminal and numinal. I thought those were all pretty obvious.
Still only made it to 20.
Susan (San Diego)
I love these Tight-Fit Sudoku puzzles!
David Connell (Weston CT)
A very interesting Spelling Bee, with almost entirely Latin-based words in the list (muumuu is a distinct outlier here). Three three-pointers, I don't remember that happening before.
Jack Sullivan (Scottsdale, AZ)
I had three also, but was not very confident about two of them. Mr Longo llists only one of them in the magazine (and I thought it was a proper noun).
Madeline (<br/>)
Fun with Spelling Bee! SPOILERS...

Off to a very slow start, but for once I remembered MUUMUU. My vocabulary is better than my spelling -- I had two misspelled words, but since their correct spelling was still legit, I counted them. (Anull instead of ANNUL, and Tummult instead of TUMULT.)

I was sort of surprised that of the available letters, no words started with two of them.
Mark (San Francisco)
Bee took a while for me this week, but was fun.

(To save people from having to ask: 8, 15, 22.)
Jerrold (New York, NY)
"Projectors" is always a challenging "middle" puzzle.

[MAJOR SPOILER ALERT]

My gimmes were PENCE and SHREW.
I wound up feeling surprised at myself for not getting TRIBE
right away also.
I wonder if there was a mistake in the cluing for RAIMI.
I had to search for that one, but it turns out that he was the writer and also one of the producers, but not the director.
Jerrold (New York, NY)
Madeline (<br/>)
I had to look up the spelling of Sam's last name -- I had the "i" in the wrong place. And that was critical, since it involved the "given" letter!

I was torn between PENCE and OUNCE until the crosses filled in.
RY (Forgotten Borough)
PB'S Projectors was fun, as usual.
L (NYC)
Listen up, NY Times: YOU DID NOT PRINT THE ANSWERS TO THE "SPELLING BEE" IN THE ACTUAL MAGAZINE SECTION. Are you going to give us the answers online so we can check ourselves???
Deb Amlen (Wordplay, The Road Tour)
Hi L,

My secret agents tell me that the answers are on page 80.
RY (Forgotten Borough)
Yup.