[Warning: The following post contains spoilers for last Sunday’s New York Times Spelling Bee. In fact, if you read the title, it may have already been spoiled for you.]

I think it is important to note up front that I am very good at the Spelling Bee.

This is not a brag - I just think it is important context for this post.

It is rare that I do not achieve Genius level. On occasion, when it is a slow day for me and an easy-ish day for the Bee, I have achieved Queen Bee status. I have included my stats there on the left to back up my claims.

See that? 810 out of 828 geniuses. Or genii. (I don’t know. I’m not a real genius.)

And some of those are days I just forgot to finish the game and revealed the answers the next day before I remembered I hadn’t finished the puzzle.

Now, this is not to say I know all of the words. Sometimes there are lucky guesses on letter pairings to form a 4-letter word I’ve never seen before.

I try to learn those words but often they have no meaning to my everyday life so I’m not always learning something new from the Spelling Bee.

But last week I did.

Sometimes I get to Genius level without figuring out the 7-letter pangram.

It happens often enough - sometimes I just don’t see the long word.

But rare is it that I have never in my life heard of the pangram.

And so it was last Sunday when ‘pettifog’ apparently was a word the New York Times thought we should be able to spell in the Spelling Bee.

This one I looked up - and I’ve put the definition to the right there.

It’s not a word I am likely going to use in my life.

But there’s an interesting backstory to the word - the original ‘ambulance chaser’ - so maybe it’s worth knowing.

At this point in my life the new knowledge I gain is simply something I hope can help me out on a crossword, or maybe if I ever go to a trivia night. (Something I hoped to do as part of this 2025 challenge but might spill over into the new year.)

At the very least…maybe at some point those letters will appear in the Spelling Bee again.