Funny how some seem to click better than others. I find the ones with lots and lots of words to be much tougher than the ones with few words. This one wasn't so bad for me. I made genius...usually do...and am only 1 word short of queen bee.

Im one word short of QB too. I’ve been spinning and spinning trying to see it.

Just got it by dumb luck. Yay me, the Queen Bee.

Congratulations! 👑🐝 I’m four words short of QB and tired of looking.

Wahoo ded! Congrats!!

Aha! Found the last one. Got QB!!

Finally. It was a struggle!

Lol, we share the throne.

Luckily, it is big enough for all of us!!

Annie, I was also surprised at the omission of pelmet, and both undaunted and unindicted several weeks ago. Today they missed jammy, which would undoubedly surprise Allison Roman and Melissa Clark who contribute recipes to the NYTimes cooking section. And it's still a mystery why the word fel!@+e is allowed!

Today I achieved my 121st consecutive Queen Bee. It’s a personal record; I am going for 365.

Wow, KSWL, mighty impressive!

Wow! that is truly impressive! I just started playing this week and I’ll be thrilled if I ever reach Genius level. My vocabularly obviously needs some work. ;)

I was under the impression British words were a no-no on the Spelling Bee. Today, lorry was accepted. I also get confused about abbreviated words, like trig is ok, but others are not. Radar is a go, lidar is not, grrrrr. Rant over.

Well, even on fhe ”Not That…” version, I don’t do very well. I thought my vocabulary was bigger than that!

Kswl, I'm really impressed. I get to genius every morning and usually stop there, but if I go back to it later in the day I rarely get to QB. I think I've only done it half a dozen times and I've been playing since the puzzle began. I also do the print version in the Sunday magazine, which has slightly different rules.

Bpath, I rarely get to genius. It's not a vocabulary problem, it's a how you think and see things problem, if you ask me. On today's puzzle, where I did indeed make genius, I did not see mommy until nearly the end, hardly a vocabulary problem.

My husband looks at the puzzle for a few seconds and gets at least one panagram. He explains that as a middle schooler he programmed his ancient Apple computer to create fake words for his D&D games. Apparently he had to name people and places with names you could actually pronounce. He learned to combine letters into consonant and vowel combinations, then form and concatenate syllybals into words. He gets to genius in a NY minute. I get to genius once or twice a week :-(

It's also practice. The more of these you do, the more words you remember when you see certain letter combinations, like RATATAT, ACACIA, and BAOBAB, three words I always used to miss and now mostly remember.

kswl, I'm blown away by your track record!

It's rare I don't get to genius, but I typically don't try for QB every day. I look at the answers the next day and often find words that simply aren't in my ken and I'd never get there...some ethnic food or obscure bone. I do kick myself when I see I might've gotten it had I tried harder. But I agree Zalco that it's often a matter of missing words that you've gotten before...just sometimes you don't see them. What always amazes me though is, once you've found a word that's taken a long time to find, you can't unsee it and it keeps coming up again and again.

I do try to link words in my mind so if I find one, I find them all, but even at that, I will often miss one or more of them such as liar, aril, rail, lira, rial or tepee and teepee.

I often miss tattoo, but I've gotten good at remembering nonillion. 😊

I love that we are all thinking about the same words. i was frustrated over pelmet and in disbelief over undaunted (yet daunted was included).

Tomtit Theres one ive learned. Im two words away from QB today but ready to throw in the towel.

kswl, thats amazing

AD, I got tepee the other day but not teepee. 🙄

KSWL, I’m in awe of your Queen Bee record! I, too, am shocked and surprised that fel**** is included.

Right now, I’m 7 words away from QB and likely not to get any further. I have house guests who have the audacity to interfere with my Spelling Bee fun!

Well, terriks, ”tattoo” was in my cryptic crossword today and I kept getting thrown iff becauss i misspell it.

Wahoo! Did it!

I also get annoyed when not all the currencies are included...they take lira and rand, but not forint.

Exactly, Annie! You can tell by the words i cluded that the editor is a twenty something who lives in the NYC area (he is and does) and i also venture to guess he orders a lot of Indian food 😎

When i first started playing the spelling bee earlier in the pandemic I would not get out of bed until I had reached genius; I felt I had to at least accomplish that every day. I didnt tealize there were words beyond that level because genius is the last level on the score list screen. One day I was looking theough the crossword forum comments after a particularly egregious (and erroneous, I thought) crossword clue [i do those too], and came across posts relating to the QB and other game features of which i was unaware. The rest is history, lol. I went through an insomniac phase for a few weeks and did a stint posting hints for those having trouble solving to QB. Then I decided to set a 365 day challenge and I’m a third of the way there.

I keep my own list of words that i tend to forget, everybody seems to have their own weirdly idiosyncratic list. I often forget lotto and motto, but I almost always spot the pangram as soon as i look at the puzzle… go figure. Glad to see so many fellow 🐝zzers here?

I got my first genius ranking! woohoo! my last word was roomy. I didn't have mommy. Too funny.

My last word yesterday was amyl, which i only got by randomly poking at letters. QB two days in a row. havent looked at today’s yet.

I just read through this entire thread. When I saw the topic, I thought Annie was the Queen Bee! HA!

The thread has brought back fond memories of my grandmother. I can see her sitting on "her" end of the sofa (beside her table/lamp combo) as she did the crossword puzzle. Sadly, her love for puzzles (and cards) did not pass on to me. LOL

Wow I found today's especially difficult and was happy just to make genius...forget QB!

When it wouldn’t take doldrum, dado or dada, I quit!

Well, wait, is there a doldrum? Or just plural doldrums?

Merriam-Webster has ”doldrum,” singular not plural.

They also did not take ”rumdum” if you can imagine that! It took ages to get QB today , for awhile I thought we would have to miss church or at least be grieviously late. But eventually i got day 123 so I am officially past the first third of a year of 👑🐝s, hooray!

Kswl, wowzers!

I was shocked when dumdum went in.

IIRC correctly, dumdum is a type of hollow-point bullet.

dada may be a proper noun so excluded, but dado should definitely be on the list.

The Tate doesn’t treat ”dada” as a proper noun

MOMA does

🤷🏻‍♀️

I thought dumdum was a sucker/lollypop.

Dumdum lollipops is a trademarked name I think.

Several compound words today and a rather esoteric culinary related word. Otherwise pretty straightforward.

And two Toyotas. ;-)

I also keep thinking of people's names and then remembering they're not allowed. Barbra, Barbara, Babar....

I was doing it at 3am (DH was leaving for an early flight so of course I woke up) and at that hour I got just the 4-letter words. I couldn’t figure out why it was taking me so long to get to 16 points. DH left, I put the phone away, and then pulled it out one last time for a 7-letter word. That shut me out. Oh well. Later I started ”Not That…” It’s funny how I change my game playing between the two.

I try DADO every time. 😂

QB this morning! So much easier when there aren't too many words.

Agree— anything under 30 seems almost easy. Almost… there were a few hiccups this am. Luckily I remember the cricketing term that comes up regularly from reading Dorothy Sayer mysteries fifty years ago. 👑🐝 for 124. This is less bragging than a marking down of something in my life I can actually control. (Well, a little bragging but not too much bc it does get so much easier the longer you’re at it.)

edited to reduce this number to 124 from the 125 i first posted yesterday. i can spell like heck but i obviously can’t count. Today it’s 125 and hopefully tomorrow it will be 126.

I got knocked out with two words, a five-letter and a pangram.

Kswl, go ahead and brag - it's deserved!

Congrats to you! I'm still one word short....probably a cricket term I don't know....

Kswl, that record deserves being bragged about! I’m happy if I can make QB a couple of times a week!!

Yesterday I missed by 1: goggly?