Confrontation with My Own Cheating

My wife and I do the Spelling Bee, one of the games in the NY Times. She goes first and gets as many words as she can. Then it is my turn. I see if I can get the rest. We usually make it to Genius level, their highest ranking. Sometimes we get to Queen Bee, which means we got all the words.

We use the hints that they publish. To us, that is not cheating. The hints give how many words start with the same first two letters, also the length of the words starting with the same first letter (the minimum length is 4 letters).

The fun in doing this is in guessing the words themselves, given the seven letters they give you, where the letter in the center must be in the word, and there are 6 other letters that can be used in the word. Letters can be used more than once.

Sometimes, you look for additional help. With four letter words you can brute force an answer, especially when the center letter is not one of the first two letters. This is a kind of cheating. But, on the flip side, if you've never heard of the word before you certainly won't guess it. The vast majority of words are familiar. But these puzzles do include obscure entries. IMHO, cheating on those is acceptable.

A second type of cheating that I've discovered is by using an online dictionary. I use Dictionary.com. If you type in the first few letters, it will suggest full words that begin that way. Once in a while, such a word can be made with the letters provided in the puzzle. I've actually found many words this way that the puzzle does not accept. Usually they are technical terms, or the English version of words from a foreign country. Also, if a word has two different spellings, the puzzle might only accept one of those. So it is a bit arbitrary. In any event, this type of cheating can produce words that I should have guessed in advance. Then I have some regret from doing it. On the other hand, even though I'm retired I don't want to spend the full day doing this puzzle.

The most egregious form of cheating is following the Community link. There someone has posted answers - though in hint form, not the words explicitly. Going there is the last resort, for when you're ready to give up on the puzzle. It's good for words you've never heard of before. Last Sunday, one of the words was Haboob. It's been a very long time since I studied vocabulary for the SAT, but I don't think that haboob was on the list. (And typing now, the browser is giving a red squiggle under it, so maybe it's not really a word.)

At present I have 54 words out of 55 in total for today's puzzle. I know the first two letters of that last word and how many letters it has. I'm procrastinating on deciding whether to keep guessing at this last word or cheating on it.

Procrastination is its own form of cheating. I do it a lot. Some role model for our students, huh?