I did the same thing. I’m at 32/38 words. May or may not try to find more. I usually work until I get to genius, then look at the hints if I want to get all the way to queen bed.
Ooh, impressive. I have an 8 letter word and two 9 letter words (including a pangram) but nothing longer… yet.
Ok, I found the 11 letter word!
August 28
Genius
32 words
142 points
3 pangrams
I think I’m giving up.
Queen beds are a nice thing to achieve, but I sleep in a court jester sized bed
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After getting genius and reviewing the hints, I fell short of 2 of the B words, neither one I’ve heard before.
I’m same with Triweasel, almost always get Genius on my own (though needed help on Sunday) then look at the hints if I feel like it. If there are a relatively small number of words and I’m sitting through a boring meeting at work I’ll try to get QB in my own, or at the very least turn to the hints for the number of words/points needed but try not to look at the grid.
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When I play, I don’t look at hints until I get to Genius. Without hints it would take hours, if ever, for me to get to Queen Bee. It probably takes about 30-40 minutes on average, which is a bit too long (even though I enjoy it), so we’ve discontinued for the time being. I do Connections instead, which is much quicker (although todays took a while). We’ve pulled out of NYT altogether, after they announced they shifting sports to The Athletic (an extra subscription, like WireCutter).
We’ve since received several emails offering $50 for a year of everything (NYT, Games, Athletic, Wirecutter and Recipes) so will probably come back soon. Meanwhile, we took out a year’s subscription to WaPo for a very low price.
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Which makes the scores distorted when you have ED or ING on the board, as suddenly a 4 letter word becomes 1 point for the word, plus 6 more for adding ED.
Yeah, it’s an odd scoring system. I could see maybe something like 2 points for the first four letters and one point for each additional letter or something.
Oh well. 
You are considerably better than I am. I stall out a level or two before genius before looking at hints, then stop after hitting genius. Straight word games are not my forte, I’m better at the crossword where having knowledge is useful (recently hit a 100 day streak, occasionally have Saturdays mess me up).
Today’s Connections was fun. I’m starting to acknowledge that thinking through the whole puzzle is needed to avoid errors.
That’s the whole trick of connections and why it’s fun. Need to see the whole puzzle to figure things out and lots of ways people can get crossed up. I used up all my errors before solving.
I think I played for a year or two before I could regularly hit Genius. 3-letter and 4-letter combinations reappear regularly, so after a while I started remembering all the permutations for those combinations. There are quite a few words that Spelling Bee doesn’t accept, some of them that don’t seem all that rare.
That’s the drawback to playing online vs. on paper. At least on paper you can accept your own words, though it can be a pain since there are so many words where I’m not sure if they are actual words. Paper version has different rules - words have to be 5+ letters, pangrams are worth 3 and all other words are 1 point regardless of length.
Ugh I’m at 47/48 words. Hate when that last one eludes me.
Hah got it. Pretty obscure word but it’s legit.
Dang y’all are putting me to shame. I’m still at 37 words / 135 points.
I haven’t looked at the hints though.
Ok, looking at the hints I quickly got to 44 words, so I’m still missing 4, including the one that starts with A.
Haven’t played this before. Played for a little bit, then it seemed to require a subscription. If I click the same link now, it wants money
That’s so weird… mine used to do that and no longer does. I don’t think I accidentally paid for it?!?!
Got QB yesterday with hints and a lot of guessing for the last 2 4-letter words.
Thanks to a zoom meeting I got to genius today.
Up to 50/59 words. Going to call it quits until later.