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Janet has dispatched five more emails and taken the terrier out for a last walk, while I’m set in my ways like an old antique. People might not see it as regularly because it’s not important for her to show it off. Me, I’m much more of a stubborn plodder, less nimble of mind, a grinder. So smart that she loses interest in things. She, extravagant and gaudy in her intellect and quickness. That circle of words is a lens through which I see our - Janet and my - true personalities. Perhaps this is what I like about the Spelling Bee most. Meanwhile, I’m painstakingly building my ladder to genius, one yeoman rung at a time. Her spectacular start will fizzle between excellent and genius. An email to be answered, an ignored pet to be petted. Or something will take her away from the page. She could be informing me my hair is on fire. She could be speaking some obscure dialect of Xhosa. Those words Janet is uttering to me right now. The theater of the comedic absurd of our three dogs. I have to close out everything, including whatever’s going on around me. “Genius,” in one half-hour sitting, requires a feat of concentration. (It looks like something out of a leftover Highlights magazine from the pediatrician’s office.) Achieving “good” on its scale of ratings doesn’t require too much mental heavy lifting. The Bee, as we call it around the house, is harder than it looks. Try drawing out the crossword puzzle on your hand. You can write the letters on your hand and draw a circle around the center letter. The Spelling Bee by comparison is simple as a yoga mat. It often reminds me of a health club outfitted with the latest equipment: all that up and down, back and forth. It looks complicated on the page even before you peruse the clues: the Rorschach arrangement of the black boxes, the complex symmetry of its composition.

The crossword is a marvelous achievement of architecture. It appears only once per week, and what’s true in love is also true in puzzles, absence does indeed make the heart grow fonder. I’ve come to look forward to the Spelling Bee more than the Times crossword. Our current administration could use one. There’s no such thing as a group genius, which is too bad. Isn’t that the way a true genius would do it? Another rule: one puzzle per person. You have to do the puzzle all in one sitting, preferably in a half hour or less. If you ask me, the Times doesn’t have enough rules. I have my own private set of rules for attacking the Spelling Bee. Oftentimes, Janet will have found a second three-pointer by now. She hands the paper over and all I see is a flurry of stingy one-pointers: quiet, quite, unquiet, quint, quaint, equine, quinine. We’re not competitive about things unless we’re competing against each other. I am already behind before I’ve even begun. Most weeks while Janet’s climbing back upstairs, she happily trills, “Found the three-pointer!” We find, as with fine books, a challenging puzzle needs to be taken in hand. “The Spelling Bee’s up,” Janet will announce most Thursday evenings and go down to her office to print two puzzles from her computer. That’s it, except for the rating: what score qualifies as good, excellent or genius. Using all seven letters is worth three points, any other entry a single point.

Six outer letters in a wheel with a seventh letter at the center. What I like about it is it’s sort of the anti- Times crossword puzzle. It’s available Thursday nights online, sometime after eight PST. I don’t bother with Monday through Wednesday anymore.īut recently there’s been a new kid in town, the weekend Spelling Bee. Sunday is a hard Thursday, with more cleverness. With regular practice, you learn the week gets progressively harder.