I love The New York Times “Spelling Bee.” I hate it. I love it. I hate it. It is my non-toxic escape from the never-ending barrage of belligerence and bullying blasting across the airwaves, the Internet, billboards, lawn signs. You name it. All of it so loud, triggering.
In the last two weeks, I have scored four Queen Bees playing “Spelling Bee.” Yay, me! I did resort to looking at the hints and sometimes entered random letters willy-nilly and was shocked when some of them formed real words. I turned to my dictionary to make sure I knew what they meant. I have railed at my phone when a word I know is a word and enter again and again only to get “Not In Word List” pop up again and again. Irate, I have checked the Merriam-Webster Dictionary and confirmed, “Ah-ha, it is a word. What the heck?” I have woken up from a dead-sleep in the middle of the night and grabbed for my phone to enter a word that has just swum to the surface of my brain.
The first time someone asked me, “Do you play “Spelling Bee?” I answered, “Nope. I can’t go there.” And then I had to explain that I cannot start a puzzle because I cannot stop until it is solved. This does not apply only to word and number games. Jigsaw puzzles can keep me stuck on a chair in front of a coffee table with a thousand pieces spread all over the place for hours. I blame my father for this. He was a puzzle addict too. One Christmas Eve morning, we sat in our PJs for six hours until we finished a puzzle.
Looking for clues, uncovering symbols, putting pieces together, seeking explanations and answers, making things make sense and then fixing what seems to be broken or wrong is my nature. It’s one reason why I’m a writer and an editor. It’s one reason I love mysteries — why I ruminate — to an unhealthy degree — about things that happened or might happen and about situations that need to be solved in a better way (at least to me). And it’s one reason, I click on “The Morning” and scroll down to “Spelling Bee” as soon as I am awake, check what I might have missed the day before, start playing and escape into my all-consuming, love-hate relationship.
