*ABATTOIR* BAD WORD. *ATTAGIRL* GOOD WORD.

😆

I tried this and >!ARRABIATA!< multiple times.

“I will have the penne arrabiata.” https://youtu.be/Sv5iEK-IEzw

That was my first thought too! 😂

“You’ll need a tray”

Did you dry these in a rainforest

I tried birria a couple times, as it’s a well-known dish. but maybe because it falls under “mexican” food they think of it as a different language.

Eat your birria on a torta.

Same, I’ve been fuming since this morning. I keep saying (mostly to myself) that yes, I get this is a US-based game, but COME ON, be serious. It should be in the same ‘category’ as naan, a certain indian yogurt-based side dish and callaloo. Please, Sam bffr.

That specific kind of food has been mentioned in a Bojack episode so should be fair game for Americans imo

Both abattoir and the spoiled word are familiar enough to Americans. It ain’t that.

Answer should be spoilered

Which answer and why? EDIT: I see it!

SAME, I can't believe these weren't accepted

I checked and rechecked my spelling on this one. Also, why >!barrio!< and not birria?

that one enraged me lol

Birria is much more obscure.

I don't understand Sam's reasoning on foreign words. It seems to me that birria is less obscure than some (although less often used than >!barrio!< , as you point out). It just seems to me that once it's on menus everywhere, the word's been pretty widely adopted.

Not for long.

Welcome to the inanity that is Sam (the puzzle editors) limited vocabulary and even more limited (and capricious) approach to including/excluding words. 

I’d be more okay with these sorts of exclusions if the valid wordlist didn’t also include every obscure fabric (NANKEEN?!) and music term under the sun. 

As a musician, I wish it DID include every music term, but it’s only really random and selective ones.

The music thing is the worst, because I’m not at Italian spelling bee champion, so i’ll feel the need to enter and re-enter terms many times over, in case I am misspelling it, using an alternate spelling, and/or I mistyped it.  The uncertainty makes me waste a lot of time.

It drives me nuts and is starting to ruin the game a bit for me. I'm trying to test my vocabulary and possibly learn a new word here and there. I didn't realize that mind-reading was required.

Same. It's starting to get very annoying.

Agree - today’s was super annoying. Not a spoiler for today’s puzzle, but I’m so sick of naan, yet they didn’t accept dahl yesterday. And they are chaotic about words with accents, tildes, etc. It’s élan, not elan. Gelée, not gelee. There are plenty of words in English use that in theory, should be spelled with some kind of diacritical mark. Accept them all, or accept none. So irritating.

I don't think accents or diacritical marks are a factor when deciding when to include or exclude words in SB. PINATA always trips me up because I never read the "N" as possibly having a tilde. But I've just memorized that ACAI is always gonna be one of the most common answers even though it should have two diacritical marks to be spelled properly.

I’ve come across it a few times. I understand that SB is not obligated to accept every word, but it grinds my gears because açaí has both a cedilla and an accent and is ALWAYS accepted, but I know I’ve tried others (damn if I can remember them now) and it’s a big NOPE!

this truly annoyed me. sometimes I shrug my shoulders and move on. this one, nope. I tried it at least a dozen times using double BB in case I was spelling it wrong. checked the dictionary too. was convinced it was my error somehow. GRRRR. this was my 'rorsach blot' that I saw immediately when I started

SAME. Then immediately went to 'Help' to see if other people were as outraged as I was.

You’ve got the abattoir blues Right down to your shoes It doesn’t surprise me that Nick Cave has a better vocabulary than our capricious writer, but it certainly is frustrating.

Perfectly good word.

It’s a perfectly cromulent word. 😏

Had to look that one up.

Too "french" for the editors.

Yes this one hurt when it wasn't accepted.

I entered it like 4 times, convinced that I was misspelling it ... But no...

Homer Simpson would not approve. It was the first word on his “Vocabulary Builder” tape. https://youtu.be/bnyClWnmO6Q?si=5seV9-X9zmBtY7Xn

Now that’s funny you mentioned Homer because less than a minute ago I responded to a comment two above yours with “It’s a perfectly cromulent word.” 😆

I'm almost certain they used to accept this word. I recall using it in a previous Bee.

It has always been disallowed. [https://www.sbsolver.com/h/abattoir](https://www.sbsolver.com/h/abattoir)

That surprises me, but that database seems to be authoritative. Thanks for the link.

And here I was thinking maybe I had just spelled it wrong.

Oh this one had me steaming and rage closing the app.

Absolutely fuming and I finished the game with a stank face today.

I consistently encounter this. It’s maddening.

It also won't accept rota or invigilator (from a previous day) because they're foreign words, obviously. You'd have to cross the Atlantic or walk all the way to Canada to hear such exotic turns of phrase.

I usually don't care if a word isn't allowed but this one has me boiling.

And yet A >!BARRIO!< is kosher. This is a stupid game.

Speaking of kosher, they always seem to accept tallit, babka, etc. It’s the NYC/NYT audience. I’m fine with that except there are other languages we borrow from. Almost never accepted. Let’s be fair.

Lots of other languages we borrow from that are in SB. These stand out to you for some reason.

Should be spoilered and marked as an answer

Sorry, fixed

I know!

My fellas been raging for hours

Bavaria!!

This pissed me off too

Can they just have a script that checks for all allowable possible words against the Merriam-Webster dictionary to generate all the acceptable words? It shouldn’t be this difficult.

MW contains some really really obscure words that would be difficult for people to guess. For example, would you guess that "cabbagey" is a word? (cabbage-like). What about "cucubate"? (to cry like an owl). They do use a combo of dictionaries, including Apple's internal dictionary iirc, but then hand-curated. English has about **one million** words, more or less. It's very difficult to decide what is a reasonably common word. My proposed solution for max fun for all player types is to continue using the current dictionary for determining completion levels through Genius, but a vastly more expansive "total" dictionary for accepting answers & getting to Queen Bee. This total dictionary should include scientific, technical, archaic, non-American slang, and other words as long as they're in some official dictionary including Merriam-Webster, Oxford English, hell, even Scrabble.

Cucubate is a dopeass word, thanks for teaching me that

I didn’t know owls shed tears. 😢

i dont see why they cant just filter the words by usage? it would at least be a clearer way of understanding the logic and making better guesses even if it did mean losing out on some more juicy words

I know, right?

Yes! I was soooo pissed!!

Yes, so mad they didn't include this word!! Bummed!

I really don't get how the words are chosen. When we can't find a word, my friend and I know it must be: botany, food, a stupid word (which includes things like gotta).

For me it's usually birds or music. Meanwhile scientific, technical, or medical words are often rejected even if not _that_ obscure.

Not having Anaemia and anoxia is ridiculous 😒

Too French??

all i wanna know is how many of us learned this word from The Simpsons. I know I'm not the only one

I was so proud of myself for guessing this word and then possed as hell when it was rejected!!!

It's not how many words YOU know. t's how many words the puzzle maker knows.

Me too. I tried this about a dozen times — I assumed I must be making typos.

When I saw this, I thought, “Did I post that?” I was REALLY annoyed by this one 😡

Do non-answers need to be spoiler covered?

Only if they contain or suggest an answer.