Puzzling over the New York Times Spelling Bee, Jordan in Cheyenne, Wyoming, played the word pipped, but was surprised that the game disallowed it. He remembers hearing the word in stories about the historic 1954 Miracle Mile race between Sir Roger Bannister and John Landy. It’s true that the word is commonly used in British English, but as Bee editor Sam Ezersky has explained, the game’s answers are selected from curated lists compiled from some dictionaries and not others, and those parameters are also part of the challenge. This is part of a complete episode.
Quiz Guy John Chaneski serves up a Common Bonds puzzle, in which the object is to guess the common idea in each of three things. For example, what’s the one word that connects a grade on a report card, USDA inspected beef, and an incline? This...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski’s puzzle was inspired by the story of Reverend Archibald Spooner, who supposedly mixed up the initial sounds of words, getting tangled in such verbal missteps as “It is kisstomary to cuss the bride.” For...
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