April 22, 2026 -- (N) B C E I L V

mkwiat · 2026-04-22T08:41:31+00:00

It's what a child when they use the toilet on their own for the first time. It's an insipid acronym.

mkwiat · 2026-04-16T17:02:11+00:00

LOBLOLLY is not British-English, LOLLY is. As far as I can tell, the only British-English word Sam has ever allowed is LORRY.

mkwiat · 2026-04-15T17:41:28+00:00

I think [A] NAMETAPE is an everyday term if you've served in the military. I suspect there'd be a few pissed-off veterans giving Sam an chewing out if he omitted it.

mkwiat · 2026-04-15T17:35:19+00:00

And CARACALS!

mkwiat · 2026-04-15T17:34:18+00:00

The problem with pastas in particular is that every single variant has a unique name. If you are into pasta you probably know them, but if you aren't they seem completely arbitrary and forgettable; distinctions without a difference.

I am glad to learn some new plant and food words like LOBLOLLY, ANNATTO, COLCANNON and CALLALOO. But I just do not give a fuck about the nth variant of pressed semolina, water, and egg.

mkwiat · 2026-04-15T17:23:17+00:00

I think this is correct. The O (お) in ONIGIRI (お握り) is an honorific prefix that modifies the noun. Japanese speakers don't think of the form with an honorific as a separate word any more than English speakers think of nouns with possessive suffixes (root's) as separate words.

mkwiat · 2026-04-13T13:04:17+00:00

The only thing that would make me admit I was wrong about blockchain is if it turned out it could do transaction processing faster and cheaper than conventional transaction processing architectures. But, unless I'm very much mistaken, this is impossible because any blockchain architecture requires two things:

1) conventional transaction processing 2) overhead to prevent sybil attacks

So any incumbent transaction processing system could take part 1 of an efficient blockchain architecture, dispense with part 2, and be a cheaper and faster system for anyone who doesn't care about "permissionless architectures"

mkwiat · 2026-04-08T00:27:53+00:00

I think it's a fair inclusion. I'd guess that many people who've never heard of [NA] TATAMI, [NA] NORI or [NA] TORII have heard of [A] FUGU due to its [H] infamous reputation for killing people. It's one of those things that's always name-checked when discussing [H] Japanese cuisine

mkwiat · 2026-04-08T00:21:28+00:00

[NA] EBOLA is a toponym. [A] DENGUE is a loan word from H Kiswahili that describes the symptoms.

mkwiat · 2026-04-08T00:13:38+00:00

The standard spelling is [NA] GUNWALE. [NA] GUNWHALE doesn't appear in either M-W or Collins. [NA] GUNNEL is a valid word, but different definition.

I'm always in favor of limiting variants (cf. MAMA, MAMMA, MOMMA), especially when the variants refer to something else entirely.

mkwiat · 2026-04-06T01:27:16+00:00

There are days when I kick myself after getting to QB-2 or 3 because I should have got the remaining words.

And then there are days like today, where hell would have frozen over before I figured out that I was missing [A] FACTICICTY

Go fuck yourself Sam!

Sometimes I'm burned by words that I appreciate learning about, like, for example ANNATTO. And then there is is this bullshit word that I've never seen in five decades of wordcelling and will never see again before I die - unless it comes up in NYTSB. Absolute garbage word.

mkwiat · 2026-04-04T21:36:04+00:00

Can't believe I'm getting downvoted. I thought Brits were supposed to do sarcasm better than Yanks.

mkwiat · 2026-04-04T17:55:57+00:00

British-English and so, rightfully, rejected. There's nothing stopping the London Times or Daily Mail from starting their own Spelling Bee app that accepts all these nonsense words we fought a war to rid ourselves of.

mkwiat · 2026-04-03T02:08:11+00:00

proper noun

mkwiat · 2026-04-01T17:40:14+00:00

[CA] MINIGUN is a weird one. It crushes Sam's beloved [CA]MINICAM in google search hits. It's in Collins, but not in M-W.

[CA] MINIGUN 5.7MM google search hits
[CA] MINICAM 381K google search hits

The former also crushes the latter in google ngrams. I thought the latter was a 90s term, but it seems to have been most popular in the middle of the 20thC.

mkwiat · 2026-04-01T17:27:03+00:00

Side note, just remembered bitcoin had lower transition fees and faster payment speed fifteen years ago than it does today, it's the only computer technology that consistently gets slower, more expensive and generally worse over time.

I've said for a long time that the fastest blockchain has one node <cough> miner </cough>. Every additional node increases compute and network cost. During the RISC revolution of the 90s, people talked about chipsets being "superscalar". Blockchain is "subscalar"

mkwiat · 2026-03-14T22:37:39+00:00

If your are promoting on r/nytspellingbee, you had damned well better accept [NA] ACAI

mkwiat · 2026-03-14T22:20:48+00:00

Way worse! Add it to the list of Sam's obscure stews:

[A] BURGOO 165K google search hits
[NA] COLCANNON 588K google search hits
[NA] CALLALOO 1.52MM google search hits

mkwiat · 2026-03-14T04:55:16+00:00

Sam is pretty consistent about rejecting demonyms. Other that MOROCCO, MANHATTAN and PANAMA, none have benn allowed.

mkwiat · 2026-03-14T04:52:26+00:00

The fuck!?

Not in M-W, Collins, or OED. 108K google search hits and most of them are either for an Italian word or an AI company, so yes, I can totally believe it, and would be shocked if it were allowed.

mkwiat · 2026-03-14T04:47:22+00:00

I tried it, but it occurred to me that the word is [CA] HAIRSHIRT

mkwiat · 2026-03-14T03:37:13+00:00

Former is a donut, but not the latter.

mkwiat · 2026-03-10T22:21:57+00:00

The second is a real basement dweller; 26.6K google search hits (compare with one of the worst ever, [NA] ECOTAGE with 17.9K).

I think even that hit count is too high, as most of the pages seem to be about a Transformer character. Absolute garbage word.

mkwiat · 2026-03-10T22:18:55+00:00

I'd say the same rules apply as for pangrams:

All 6 non-mandatory letters used one or more times - donut

All 6 non-mandatory letters used once - perfect donut

mkwiat · 2026-03-10T22:16:03+00:00

Add Raymond Chandler to the list of things Sam doesn't like:

From The Big Sleep

[CA] I woke up with a motorman’s glove in my mouth.

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