Saturday, June 20, 2020

NYT Spelling Bee: HIVEBITTEN

Grid:

My genius list:


Real pangram: INHIBITIVE

Fake pangram: HIVEBITTEN

It's like snakebitten only with bees.  Yeah, I know, bees don't bite, they sting, but it's not a real word, anyway.

Difficulty: Medium

Took me several minutes of warm-up on the easy four-letter words before I was ready to take down the pangram.  It then took me more minutes to achieve genius level.  ENTENTE and INVITEE pushed me over the edge after a little dry spell.

Olio: I've never like the euphemism HEINIE -- too cutesy.  Weirdly, it was once a popular nickname for men, at least for white, baseball-playing men.  You can find around two dozen major league HEINIES, all of whom played pre-integration.  The best was Hall of Famer HEINIE Manush, with HEINIE Groh and HEINIE Zimmerman not too far behind.  The latter won the Triple Crown in 1912.

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