The Buzz About The BEE

Are you an addictive personality? Can’t live without your morning coffee, your martini at 6, or the latest episode of Succession?

Have I got a game for you: the SPELLING BEE in the New York Times.

Those of you who are new to this, don’t be fooled by the cute little logo. This little innocuous looking puzzle can be, if taken to extremes, dangerous to your mental health. It is diabolical because it sucks you in, and BEEfore you know it you are spending unBEElieveable amounts of time trying to BEEcome the coveted QUEEN BEE.

This is my true story, for addicts everywhere.

First, some background info: The object of the game is to form as many words as possible from a group of seven letters. The rankings go up from “GOOD START” (a sop for the beginner) to “NICE” to “GREAT” to “AMAZING” to “GENIUS”(which you are clearly not or you would be discovering a cure for cancer instead of binging on puzzles). But for some of us, NOT achieving GENIUS— some by the time they finish their morning coffee—is a shock to the nervous system that will not be assuaged until we get to that level later in the day, by hook or by crook.

When I first started doing THE BEE I actually asked Google to help me by giving it the letters and asking for words. This is called cheating. And it stings me, fellow puzzlers, that I would stoop to such an unBEEcoming level.

However, after doing this puzzle for a while, getting to GENIUS was a given, so then I wanted to be a QUEEN BEE. Who wouldn’t? In order to achieve this royal honor, you have to find every single word in a rather arbitrary word list. And this can be a challenge. On Sunday, the letters were:

You must use the letter in the center of the hive-like design, the words have to be four letters or more, and you can use letters more than once. There are lots more rules, including those about proper names and naughty words:

No, you can’t use the F-bomb even if you have the K U F and the C. And what about the heartbreak of MALLOMARS? You can’t BEEgin to guess how many times I could have gotten to GENIUS if only my favorite chocolate-covered cookie were on the WORD LIST.

You get points depending on how long the words are and a bonus for a pangram, which uses all the letters in one word. This time it  was EMOTIVITY, which was pretty obscure, but getable, I guess. Well, I got it, didn’t I? BTW, that’s not a perfect pangram: a word that uses each letter only once. But for some reason, you don’t get extra points for that.

This particular day, Sunday, March 12th, having gotten the pangram and a bunch of other words, I reached GENIUS pretty quickly, but then got stuck. I went to TODAY’S HINTS, which gives you, well, hints, such as EM-4, that is, there are four words beginning with EM. I managed to get those four, and most of the others, but was hopelessly stuck on the last word, one beginning with MO. There were seven of those; I had only six. I tried everything, MOVIETIME being my favorite, then gave up and watched the Oscars. (Didn’t Lady Gaga look fabulous? And the bear ridiculous?)

This morning I got the answers from Sunday, and my missing MO word was “MOIETY.”

Moiety? Really? It’s an actual word, meaning: “Each of two parts into which a thing is or can be divided.” But give me a break. Moiety? And the thing was that the MO word I thought would bring me the royal crown and all the honey was “MOMMIE.” As in “Mommie Dearest?” It was rejected. Rejected! It’s enough to make you break out in hives— or attack someone with a wire hanger! Does the editor not remember the movie, and know that it’s a perfectly reasonable entry for a word beginning with MO? I guess not.

So on Sunday, I was NOT a QUEEN BEE but merely a GENIUS. Does that make me a hasBEEn? Or am I still the BEE’S knees, whatever that means?

“You can’t win ‘em all, Honey,” as so many have reminded me, and it is now up to me to BEE or not to BEE. You saw that one coming, hive mind, so pnow let’s all make a BEEline for yet another addition . . . WORDLE.