Transcript of “Why the New York Times Spelling Bee Didn’t Include That Word”
Hi there, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Jordan calling from Cheyenne, Wyoming.
Jordan, welcome.
Hi, Jordan and Cheyenne. What’s going on?
Well, I enjoy the New York Times spelling bee game where you try to make as many words out of letters as possible, out of seven letters as possible.
And they curate the list of words that are acceptable.
They get rid of slang and curse words and pejoratives and things like that.
And I was playing the other day and the word PIPPED, P-I-P-P-E-D, came to mind.
And it was not accepted as an answer in spelling bee.
And at first I was mildly incredulous.
And then I started asking the Internet and doing a poll with my friends and family and found that I shouldn’t be very incredulous because not very many people understood it to mean what I thought it meant.
And what I’ve always understood it to be.
Oh, well, they’d never heard of it.
They weren’t sure.
They’re like tipped like a fruit, you know, a seed and like a lemon or something.
That was kind of what most of them were thinking of it as.
Whereas I have always sort of understood it to mean getting beaten at the last moment in a race or in a game.
I think of where I think I first heard of it, but I’m not actually sure where I first heard of it,
Was in the race between Roger Bannister and I think it was John Landy.
After they both broke the four-mile mark, they raced each other.
And I think Bannister came right at the last minute and won at the line.
And I always understood that to be, you know, Landy got pipped at the line.
And so that’s always how I’ve understood it.
I’ve used it when I played cribbage with my daughter.
She pipped me just the other night right at the end.
So pipped, P-I-P-P-E-D.
Yeah, P-I-P-P-E-D.
That’s correct.
Are those, I don’t know those runners, Landry and Bannister, are they American runners, British runners?
They’re British.
British runners.
Yeah.
Aha.
There you go.
Aha.
There’s a clue.
All right.
Here’s the thing.
I’m going to lay this out for you.
You’re right.
The New York Times spelling bee is incredible fun, not least because it allows people to moan and complain when the words that they found aren’t actually accepted by the puzzle.
Because as you said, it’s a curated list, which means not everything is in there.
And the editor, Sam Mazersky, has talked about this on the New York Times website.
Somebody asked a question about why words are rejected.
And he says he uses two dictionaries.
One is the Apple dictionary that’s included with the macOS operating system,
Which is based on the New Oxford American Dictionary.
And the other is Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary.
So if you look up PIP and look up the definition on those two dictionaries,
They both mark that meaning as British.
Oh, okay.
Well, there you go. I wonder if it just made its way into running lexicon via the influence of the British running of the 40s, because it was a big, the mile specifically was a big thing.
But there’s no accounting for how words get into your vocabulary. All it takes is you watching one movie or documentary or a single YouTube or a book or an article, and a word from another dialect of English can just show up in your everyday speech.
And so in this particular case, we know why PIPT wasn’t included, because it’s marked as British in those dictionaries.
And Sam was probably right not to include it in an American newspaper and an American puzzle.
Well, I don’t mean to throw shade at Sam.
I think he does a great job.
I know he gets a lot of flack.
But you have to accept that part of the game is the curated list.
So that is part of the game.
If he included every word, first, it’s an impossible task for an editor because the English language is so fast.
But second, it would make it too easy.
It needs to have a constrained list to make it harder.
Well, that’s really cool.
It’s interesting to think that it would have just leached into my language from from osmosis, basically.
That’s kind of cool to think about.
I wonder what other words I have have hiding that maybe are not as familiar to my friends and family as they are to me.
They’ve all been judging you behind your back.
I’m sure you’re right.
Absolutely.
It’s your cribbage language.
I’m sure they’ve been rolling their eyes at.
I’m sure you’re right.
Jordan, thank you so much for your call.
We appreciate it.
And thank you so much for having me.
Have a wonderful day.
All right.
Take care.
Thanks, Jordan.
Bye-bye.
Thank you.
Bye.
