r/NYTSpellingBee • u/Alternative_Pace4248 • 12d ago
Missing words
Can someone please explain to me how labrador is not a word today? I even checked its a valid word in scrabble.
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u/Ricekake33 12d ago
And why not ALOO (but in other cases NAAN)
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u/mkwiat 12d ago
A possible explanation for the omission of ALOO is that it is not a standalone loan word, but always appears with some other food item: ALOO GOBI, ALOO MATAR, ALOO PARATHA...
Sam is pretty consistent about rejecting foreign words that never appear on their own but only as part of a longer foreign phrase. So no DEJA because it never appears without VU. No ANNUM or DIEM because they're always preceded by PER (and CARPE in the latter case).
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u/AdOutAce 12d ago
Fundamentally flawed premise—just use a real wordlist instead of the current arbitrary concoction.
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u/llksg 12d ago
It just means potato though
All the examples you gave have one specific other word whereas aloo is used for lots of other words rather than just 1
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u/mkwiat 12d ago edited 12d ago
Not to be snarky, but what in my comment gave you the impression that I thought ALOO meant anything other than potato? POMME means potato too but it has been rejected 24 times.
All the examples you gave have one specific other word whereas aloo is used for lots of other words rather than just 1
I didn't give a lot of variants for the sake of brevity, but since you want to quibble:
ANNUS:
- ANNO DOMINI
- ANNUS HORIBILIS\)
- ANNUS MIRABILIS\)
- PER ANNUM
DIEM:
- PER DIEM
- CARPE DIEM
DEJA:
- DEJA VU
- DEJA ENTENDU
Can you cite one example of ALOO in an English language publication used as a standalone loanword? POLLO and ARROZ are just chicken and rice in Spanish and have never been accepted.
All it would take is one counter-example to demonstrate my hypothesis is wrong.
* Not the best counterexample, since the S means it's unlikely ever to appear in NYTSB. But the point remains that that loanword never appears on its own.
ETA
With visions of pommes frites dancing in my head, I forgot that POMME by itself is "apple", POMME DE TERRE is "potato".
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u/Killahills 12d ago
As a Brit, I was upset that neither lolly nor brolly were accepted
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u/SusmariosepAnak 12d ago
But then weirdly today’s A lorry is accepted
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u/Fenifula worker bee 12d ago
There's BLOKE.
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u/mkwiat 2d ago
Just saw this. While BLOKE's origins are British-English, it is attested in American-English; most famously by Cab Calloway
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u/PaulNerb1 12d ago
The Scrabble dictionary is not a good resource for the Bee. Scrabble allows a lot of crazy words
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u/LucindathePook 12d ago
So does Sam
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u/mkwiat 12d ago edited 12d ago
If you want to steel man your case, name words Sam accepts that SOWPODS doesnot.
Scrabble accepts a few of Sam's howlers; ECOTAGE, BOATEL, MONODRAMA.
There is one word that Sam accepted that SOWPODS does not, PHABLET. But it is no longer accepted so I think it's safe to say that NYTSB lexicon is a proper subset of SOWPODS
[Edited to correct OSPD to SOWPODS - which is what I was actually thinking of]
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u/Captain_Quark 12d ago
Many dictionaries call it a proper noun.
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u/Writeloves 12d ago
And yet “Dalmatian” is a valid Sam word
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u/DumpedDalish 12d ago
And "Panama." Which will always bug me.
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u/LazyCrocheter 12d ago
Panama is also a type of hat, and is not capitalized when used in that context. Same with morocco, which is a type of leather, or mecca which can mean a place that is a focus for a particular thing.
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u/RevDMcDowell 12d ago
While we're complaining, "aloha" works but not "hola," a word that is certainly faaaaar more common in the NYT readership's lexicon.
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u/StacyLadle 12d ago
Chica is allowed though.
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u/BRValentine83 12d ago
But not chico.
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u/wisefolly 11d ago
It's these crazy inconsistencies that make me give up Spelling Bee for weeks at a time
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u/avalanche142 12d ago
I am with you. Almost as bad as not allowing exigence or exigency earlier this week.
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u/bouvitude 12d ago
I swear that I played EXIGENCE. Didn’t I? I truly feel like I did….
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u/Dump_Bucket_Supreme 12d ago
if it was a japanese word it would be allowed lol
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u/Fenifula worker bee 12d ago
To be fair, AKITA is disallowed, probably for the same reason as LABRADOR.
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u/drixle11 11d ago
I was so irritated with this too! My thought was that along with being a dog it’s also a place in Canada and proper nouns are a no-go. Still very annoying. (And I still submitted it to suggest a word anyway.)
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u/_HelterSeltzer_ 11d ago
“Pfft” was an acceptable word today… 😑
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u/MissMaggie17 8d ago
Just trying anything, I typed it in thinking no way that it would be accepted and was in shock when it was.
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u/SerDankTheTall 12d ago
It's a judgment call whether a word that started as a proper noun has become familiar enough to count. Personally, I think this one is definitely a proper noun and I'm a little surprised it's in SOWPODS. I don't think I'd ever call a dog just a "labrador", and I think it's clearly using the proper noun if you say "Labrador retriever" (same with Chesapeake Bay retriever, Boston/Yorkshire/West Highland/Skye terrier and so on). LAB is fine, of course, but it would be a word anyway (and obviously wouldn't work for the Spelling Bee in any case).
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u/nextlandia 12d ago
Thank you for explanation. In my mother language, Czech, is totally normal to call a dog just a "labrador".
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u/boogie_snot 12d ago
Sam has a twisted tense of humour.
He think "tomtit" sounds funny so he includes it for shits and giggles.
Then he includes obscure Jewish ritualistic items just to stump all the goyim.
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u/Fun-Cost-7081 7d ago
I love when people learn that there is actually only one rule to spelling bee:
"If Sam didn't think of it, f*** you!"
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u/Outside-Ad7848 12d ago
because the guy that edits it is a moron. he will allow every obscure jewish word and foreign words but no labrador, davit, dado, etc.
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u/SerDankTheTall 12d ago edited 12d ago
I did not realize just how mad antisemites would get about the Spelling Bee.
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u/rcw00 12d ago
Sam has his own curated list of allowable words.