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:
Emend, angle, anger, inane, gnats, mange, parer
Rarer. Parle.
Rared, darer, enema (!)
leman, stane,
ender. Goes with enema.
I have regna and manat but rared doesn’t seem to be in the MWC.
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?
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.
Actually, m-w.com does take cacas. Could be it.
Scratch cacas. Can’t form it. But manat is good.
REDED
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.
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.
Glead? ( I don’t have a MWC11)
The MWC11 is online. “Glead” is not in it.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/glead
what about tanin?
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.
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.
anger, amend, angle, ender, ended, emend, enema, pared, parer
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!
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.
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
And which 11 do we think are the obscure ones?
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.”