NYT Second Sunday puzzle: 3-D Word Hunt

I used to think I was pretty good at Boggle and other word hunt games that entail tracing a word through some sort of grid. Then the Internet came along, and Facebook. Now I know that any number of my puzzle friends can trounce me at some such games, while other games will taunt me with a list of all the words I failed to find.

Do you doubt me? You will see! Below, I’ll list the words I found in Will Shortz’s 3-D Word Hunt puzzle, and people will leave comments to add the words they found easily. Some will generate a “D’oh! Should’ve seen that” and others will spur a “That word’s so obscure, who cares if you can find it in the grid?” I checked my word list against Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th edition.

From top to bottom, I got 26. “30 is genius-level” and Will’s list has 31 familiar words and 11 obscure ones. See? Not my strong suit. (Reader additions are underlined. Grand total is 41 now. Need 1 more!)

  • M: matin, mango, mange
  • A: amend, angle, anger
  • T: tinge, tango, titan, tinea
  • P: pared, parer, parle
  • C: camel
  • S: stand, sting, stamp, scamp, scats, stats, stang, stane
  • E: eared, ended, emend, enema, ender
  • N:
  • I: ingle, inane
  • A:
  • D: dared (dereg not in MWCD), darer
  • B: binge, bingo
  • L: leman
  • G: going, gnats
  • O: opera
  • R: radar, repeg, rarer, rared, regna
  • E:
  • P:
This entry was posted in Daily Puzzles and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

24 Responses to NYT Second Sunday puzzle: 3-D Word Hunt

  1. Phoebe says:

    Emend, angle, anger, inane, gnats, mange, parer

  2. SethG says:

    Rarer. Parle.

  3. ktd says:

    Rared, darer, enema (!)

  4. Sara says:

    leman, stane,

  5. Linda Murray says:

    ender. Goes with enema.

  6. Martin says:

    I have regna and manat but rared doesn’t seem to be in the MWC.

  7. Amy Reynaldo says:

    Martin, with all the times that we see RARES or RARED in crosswords (meaning “reared up”), I’m surprised to learn the verb isn’t in MWCD11. You think ENDER is solid?

  8. Martin says:

    Ender is not in the MWC11 either. I’m at 41.

    Could cacas be one? Caca is in but the online MW doesn’t accept the plural. I guess the plural of caca is caca.

  9. Martin says:

    Actually, m-w.com does take cacas. Could be it.

  10. Martin says:

    Scratch cacas. Can’t form it. But manat is good.

  11. john farmer says:

    I solved while watching a movie, and finished with 34 “solids” and a handful of “maybes.” The solids all checked out according to your list. I checked my “maybes” list in a couple of other dictionaries, and the only two that do appear are ANEAR and ANELE. I don’t have a MWC11, so someone else will have to verify.

    The common words I missed are OPERA, RARER, REPEG.

    Love the 3-D Word Hunts. Fun stuff.

    Edit: I should add that it’s a victory if I’m within 3x Amy’s time solving a crossword. I do better when the clock isn’t ticking. To paraphrase Steve Wright, every puzzle if solvable if you take the time.

  12. Martin says:

    John,

    No to both. I also tried “anear” and was surprised it was missing. Each of these word hunt reveals a number of common words that the MWC11 editors skipped and some obscure ones they included.

  13. Joe says:

    Glead? ( I don’t have a MWC11)

  14. Martin says:

    The MWC11 is online. “Glead” is not in it.

    http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/glead

  15. karen says:

    what about tanin?

  16. Martin says:

    Karen,

    Are you thinking of “tannin”?

    BTW, here’s my list of 42. They are all recognized by the m-w.com site, which seems to be exactly the same as being in the MWC11.

  17. pannonica says:

    I’m not questioning its inclusion, but I wonder when RADAR was upgraded (but decapitalized (lowercased?)) from an acronym to a mainstream word. The m-w site simply lists the origin as 1941.

    addendum: The OED has an initial citation from 1940 (actually a retroactive 1979 reference to the original), then the second citation (NY Times, 1941) is already using it as a commonplace word.

  18. anger, amend, angle, ender, ended, emend, enema, pared, parer

  19. Coolelle says:

    Hi Amy, You currently have 42 words listed (not including “dereg”, but “rared” is not in MW. However, “manat” is:

    http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/manat

    So we’ve got our 42.

    Cheers!

  20. Bruce Mansbridge says:

    Lenat is probably not in MW but is in Wikipedia. “Lenat: The unit of bogosity, derived from the fictional field of Quantum Bogodynamics. The Lenat is seldom used, as it is understood that it is too large for normal conversation. Its most common form is the microlenat.” Named after my friend Doug Lenat.

  21. SPOILER ALERT says:

    SPOILER ALERT BELOW for NYT 3-D puzzle Second Sunday

    Hi,

    I had written a program to check my answers when Will Shortz first started publishing these puzzles. (I was finding words that were not in the answers.) I use the current Scrabble tournament word list as my dictionary.

    Here are the 49 words that it finds; the information says there are 42:

    AMEND
    ANEAR
    ANELE
    ANGER
    ANGLE
    BINGE
    BINGO
    BINIT
    CAMEL
    DARED
    DARER
    EARED
    EMEND
    ENDED
    ENDER
    ENEMA
    GNATS
    GOING
    INANE
    INGLE
    LEMAN
    MANAT
    MANGE
    MANGO
    MATIN
    OPERA
    PARAE
    PARED
    PARER
    PARLE
    POIND
    RADAR
    RARED
    RARER
    REDED
    REGNA
    REPEG
    SCAMP
    SCATS
    STAMP
    STAND
    STANE
    STANG
    STATS
    STING
    TANGO
    TINEA
    TINGE
    TITAN

  22. Jo says:

    And which 11 do we think are the obscure ones?

  23. john farmer says:

    The answers to the 3D Word Hunt have been posted at the Times.

    http://select.nytimes.com/premium/xword/Feb0611.2.ans.pdf

    The list checks out with the 42 at Martin’s link above. There’s also this note:

    “For the record, although it doesn’t count as an answer, the longest word that can be spelled out is the nine-letter EMANATING.”

Comments are closed.