NYT Spelling Bee Diary — June 5, 2023

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By Deb Amlen

This is Diary of a Spelling Bee Fanatic, a weekly review of the game that drives me out of my hivemind. In a good way. Sometimes. It is probably also worth mentioning that the Diary is a work of fiction.

Read past Diary entries here, and join the daily discussion in the forum.

Mrs. Needleman is the first member of our therapy group to work a shift answering the new help hotline for Spelling Bee players who can't put the game down.

Everything is set up: Sid the mime handed out fliers about the hotline, Peter and Rhonda posted about it on their social media accounts, and I supplied our first shift worker with an ample supply of coffee.

Now all we have to do is to make sure that Mrs. Needleman knows how to use the rather complex phone bank. This is not as easy as it sounds, because Mrs. Needleman did not grow up with a complex phone bank. Mrs. Needleman's parents did not even own a telephone when she was a child. Fortunately, she managed to just barely keep up with the rapid changes in technology with the help of her husband, Harold, before he died. So we at least have that going for us.

"All you have to do when you pick up the phone is to press this button," the therapist says. She points to a button on the console and holds the receiver next to her ear as a visual aid. "Then you say: ‘Hello, this is the Spelling Bee hotline. How may I help you?’"

Mrs. Needleman furrows her brow. "Why do I have to press a button?" she asks. "At home, I just start talking."

"It's just the way the system is set up," the therapist explains. "If you receive more than one call at a time, tell the person on the other end that you will be right back and put them on hold by pressing this other button."

"There are so many buttons," Mrs. Needleman says, looking slightly dazed. "Why can't I just press the first one?"

"Because that not only allows the call to come through, it also disconnects the call."

"Oh," Mrs. Needleman says, somewhat mortified. "We don't want that."

"No," the therapist says patiently. "Especially since these people are coming to you for help."

"My," Mrs. Needleman says. "That's a lot of responsibility. I hope I can live up to it."

"I am sure you will be fine," the therapist says. "Oh, look — your first call is coming in. Good luck!"

A light is flashing on the console, and Mrs. Needleman reaches for the receiver.

"Hello?" she says. "Oh, wait, I was supposed to press this button. Where was it? Oh, there it is." She presses a button and a phone starts to ring in the therapist's handbag.

"That's OK," the therapist says. "It's set to go through to my business phone if no one else is available. See if you can find the button that connects the call."

At this point, several of the lights are flashing, and Mrs. Needleman doesn't remember which line was the first to ring. She picks one at random and presses the button. A screeching sound makes her pull the receiver away from her head as the line connects with a fax machine.

"Try this one," the therapist says, pointing at the button beneath the first light. "That will connect you to your client."

"OK," Mrs. Needleman says tentatively. "Hello? This is the Spelling Bee help hotline. How may I help you? Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that. My name is Mrs. Needleman. What's yours?"

The Spelling Bee forum is particularly lively today, largely because of the omission of the word "turgor."

To me, turgor sounds more like the name of a handsome, muscled hero in a Swiss romance novel, but I look it up and discover that it is a state of rigidity. The word is the noun form of the adjective "turgid," a form I know a bit more about (strictly from my high school sex education class, of course, and not any place else).

OUTROTH: To sock away more money for retirement than anyone else.

"So I’ve found a lucrative side gig," Sam Ezersky says as we walk to a meeting.

"Really?" I say. "I didn't know you were looking for one."

"I wasn't, but when this agency approached me, I just couldn't turn it down."

"Agency? What agency?"

"There's this company that boosts its clients’ visibility by putting them in places most people wouldn't suspect," Sam says as we get into the elevator.

"You mean product placement?" I gasp. "Sam, we’re not supposed to do that!"

"I’d rather think of it as subliminal advertising," Sam says, shifting uncomfortably on his feet. "And it's not hard to do. The first one came out today."

"And what is this subliminal message, may I ask?"

"It's for a rum company," Sam says. "Remember the old saying ‘CANDY is DANDY but liquor is quicker’?"

"Wait a minute," I say. "Are you telling me that you accepted those words in order to inspire people to buy rum?"

"Don't knock it til you’ve tried it," Sam says. "It's a lot better than their original idea."

"What was that?" I ask.

"They wanted me to sit in a dunk tank in the middle of Times Square and let people pay to knock me off if they were upset about omitted words."

CANDENY: What nobody does to a jolly good fellow.

Join us here to solve crosswords, the Mini and other games by The New York Times.

Deb Amlen, the crossword columnist and senior staff editor of Wordplay, believes that everyone can learn to solve the Times crossword. She is the author of the humor book, "It's Not P.M.S., It's You." @debamlen

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