The primary thing that I use my phone for these days is the New York Times Games app. I'm bored with social media time wasting. I play the mini and full crosswords, Wordle, Connections, Strands, Tiles, and even the new Pips. What I just started recently was Spelling Bee, which for some reason I tried years ago and didn't care for it. It's straight forward enough, as it shows you seven letters, and you have to make as many words as possible, always including the center letter. Word length I believe drives score, and each puzzle has different score levels depending on how many words there are. Puzzles with more words require you to get more words to reach the top level, which is "genius." Who doesn't want to be a genius?
I made some assumptions at first about what was easy or hard, but after three weeks, it turns out those assumptions were wrong. In fact, I can't tell you exactly what makes it possible for me to reach genius. I'm on a four-in-a-row streak this week, but in prior weeks I usually hit that level two or three times. I thought that more available words would be easier, but that isn't the case. I think it's the combination of letters available, as they relate to my vocabulary, that are the deciding factor in terms of difficulty.
For example, last week there was a puzzle with 71 possible words, using the letters I, A, U, N, G, C and R in the center. I got to amazing, with 40 words. You can rattle off quite a few because of the "-ING" that can be formed, but every root word needs the R. I was pretty excited to get "accruing" and "uncaring," which use all of the letters. "Ingraining" also felt like a win. But I was still 47 points off genius (272), and I ran out of gas.
But even with a puzzle that had 30 words, I had a similar result. Y, O, I, H, A, L and D in the center. Genius only required 83 points, and I was still 24 short. My brain kept getting stuck on "holiday," which was the first word I guessed. There is an "-LY" suffix that can be used a bit on this one. That's what you look for, prefixes and suffixes, the latter of which is often helpful because you can use many root words that end in "e" unless the suffix is there.
It's fascinating though to see how your brain does pattern recognition, and how it can be different depending on the patterns. I know that there are diagnostics that can measure a person's ability to recognize patterns, but I suspect that the endless variations on what constitutes a pattern means that those tests might not be entirely useful. It's like the difference in people where some navigate by way of landmarks, others by way of spatial relationships (I'm the latter).
Oh, and I may lose sleep if I can't at least get "amazing," the level just below genius.
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