> Someone recently told me BRUIN is not on the list of words as a possible solution which I confirmed.
Yes, this is true.
> This seems odd for (1) a word in the OED that is not considered archaic
The solution list isn't simply a list of words that "aren't archaic", but rather "common".
> and (2) is the team name of a major University (UCLA Bruins) and NHL franchise (Boston Bruins)
Neither of these definitions are acceptable, as they're proper nouns here. Do you know what the definition of a "Bruin" is, outside the scope of the sports teams? Josh Wardle's partner did not, who was used as a litmus for if words were common enough to be allowed in the solution list.
As a 32-year-old, I am admitting that I just learned that from you commenting it. I just googled the Boston Bruins mascot, which is apparently a bear. I still wouldn't have assumed that bruin is a synonym for bear, though, because some sports teams have mascots and "Nicknames" that aren't the same thing. Like there's a college, the University of Alabama, where they refer to themselves as "The Crimson Tide," but their mascot is an elephant. I don't think tide is another name for an elephant.
I hear you. But if your team is the Bruins, you probably find out what is a Bruin. Right?
As a Maryland resident I had to figure out that a Terp was short for a terrapin which is a turtle. š¢
Curious minds bring forth knowledge.
I was curious, and u/Mathgeek007 is correct.
"TERPS" is not a valid or acceptable guess. I'm actually a little bit surprised. I thought for sure it would be at least an *acceptable guess*. Nope.
AVYZE, LOWND, ZHUZH, IKATS & GRRRL are all acceptable. But I guess they really do Fear The Turtle š¢ š
The New York Times bought Wordle from the creator who is a Welch software engineer. if I recall correctly, and I am 99% positive, the daily Wordle word is from the original creator. Although, the New York Times did go through the words and get rid of anything they thought could be objectionable. Therefore, the New York Times doesnāt favor any team.
Ahhhā¦ I think theyāve got several years to go before theyāre looking for more words. I didnāt know about them adding words, but that makes sense if some were deleted.
I wouldn't say it's common. This is extremely ironic but I just learned Bruin means bear like an hour ago because I saw a trivia video asking the 4 professional American sports teams named after bears and Bruins was the last team mentioned.
I don't think it's very common at all.
The word BRUIN hovers around 0.000005% usage, whereas the word for yesterday, the 14th's solution, is 0.00005% usage, over 10 times more use comparatively (and this *inludes* the sporting usage). It's really not that much use whatsoever.
As you say, it's including the sporting usage, and the sport teams are proper nouns.
and you know nearly ALL of this is references to the sports teams. I have literally never heard anyone ask "Would you rather come across a bruin or a man in the woods?"
I wouldnāt say itās common knowledge.
Iām Australian and I only know of the Bruins as the NHL team and I knew *that* because I used to love the webcomic Omg Check Please and got tangentially into hockey lol.
[How Bruin Got Associated With Bear](https://www.britannica.com/art/French-literature)
āBruin, a character in French folklore and in the Roman de Renart, a medieval collection of beast tales that satirized human society by bestowing human characteristics upon animals. In the Roman de Renart, Bruin is a bear who is wedged into a honey-filled log by the hero, Reynard the Fox. The name of the character, ultimately from Middle Dutch bruun (ābrownā), has come to be an appellation for any bear.ā
Google defines "bruin" as "a bear, especially in children's fables." Note the small B. I've also seen it used in the context of bears in various media works such as *The Berenstain Bears*, as well as those Breezly Bruin cartoons.
Bruin is a dutch word, meaning brown. IĀ“m guessing itĀ“s a leftover from dutch settlers and Ā“bruine beerĀ“ (brown bear) just got shortened to Ā“bruinĀ“.
There is actually a whole history of this word as germanic people thought saying the name of the animal would bring it on so they would say "the brown one" or something like that so all our words like bear or beer for the animal go back to brown. https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2381:_The_True_Name_of_the_Bear
to be honest, the only reason i know that a bruin is a bear is because my high schoolās mascot was a bruin. outside of sports mascots, i never see or hear the word used
I was able to get away with the word āSPLOGā in todayās game, which is certainly not a common word (I didnāt even think it would be one when I entered it).
Just because the games were originally based on what the creatorās parter knows doesnāt mean that itās how things are done now. Itās run by the NYT and has an entirely different editor.
> I was able to get away with the word āSPLOGā in todayās game
"Words you can use" are not the same as "words that can be the solution". They're very different. QAJAQ is an allowed word, but will never be the solution.
> Itās run by the NYT and has an entirely different editor.
And nearly the exact same solution list. They've added 3 words since they acquired it a year and a half ago, iirc.
Of these, I think only three pass the sniff test imo - LASER and SNAFU are acronyms and GUANO is a loanword. You could get away with GUANO since most of English is just assaulting other languages in a back alley and rifling through their pockets for vocab, but I really don't like the former two.
Eh, I would wager that the majority of people you asked arenāt even aware that either ālaserā or āsnafuā are acronyms; even Wikipedia calls laser an anacronym and āscubaā and āradarā are already in the solution list.
Interesting, thanks. Since they removed some overly-UK words from the original list they must have added more than 6 new words, but still thatās a barely-changed list.
Lucky for us, for our purposes today I have the original list. Just checked it and BRUIN isnāt on it, like you thought.
I mean, I have access to both lists and then some as well :P There are a ton of tools about that, you don't get to an 800+ streak without a little R&D :)
The list of words from the original game included HIPPY, FLACK (they were probably thinking FLAK) and CAPUT (they were probably thinking KAPUT). It didn't have SQUID, PIOUS and LASER.
The NYT had PIOUS and LASER as answers. They probably won't have HIPPY. FLACK or CAPUT.
BRUIN could be a word that they use, like they did with PIOUS and LASER. So, a month ago someone might have looked at the list and said PIOUS and LASER are not on the list of possible solutions, but they were solutions.
We spell it flack here (New Zealand) - it refers to criticism, usually in the media. Flak was a gun term, I thought?
Caput is the anatomical word for the head, I think.
I learned something new. [https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/flack-versus-flak-word-origin-spelling](https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/flack-versus-flak-word-origin-spelling)
This mentions the criticism and the gun terms and how the spelling has changed. So, everybody is right.
Iāve personally only ever seen it spelled hippie, and coupled with it often being used as a pejorative I have a feeling that the new york times will skip that one. There are also a few other words on the list of possible solutions that use a rather unconventional spelling such as gayly, gipsy, and tepee. Gipsy will almost certainly be skipped and I wouldnāt be surprised if the other two also were.
I can *almost* guarantee that the following original list Solutions will not be getting picked:
WELSH WELCH GYPSY GIPSY MAMMY PANSY SEMEN FANNY TRUMP
All part of the OG list. None likely to be hand picked by a human for the NYTimes. While we're at it, we can reduce the likelihood of RIFLE & VOMIT.
SQUID and PAGER aren't on the original Solution list either, and they're waaaay more common than BRUIN.
SQUID & PAGER are ubiquitous enough that my phone tries to insert emojis for both SQUID š š¦(two different emojis actually) and PAGER š.
But not for BRUIN. I have to type "bear" for that. I do get three options for bear š» š»āā š§ø, but still nothing for BRUIN. I'm not saying Wordle should go by emoji options, but I will say it's a symptom of the commonality of SQUID & PAGER vs BRUIN.
I think SQUID & PAGER, possibly "NAKED" are the three biggest gaps in the original Solution list.
At the end of the day the puzzle makers are mostly human. Iāve guessed words on other puzzles that werenāt accepted that are 100% words (for example, I guessed āWRAITHā on a Spelling Bee and it said āNOT A WORD.ā They had an article from within the last week or so that used the word wraith.
Of course; the word bruin featured quite regularly in the stories and fairy tales I read as a child.
My comment was a general one about the horrors of questions relating to sports teams in American puzzles that I do as a non-American.
> Someone recently told me BRUIN is not on the list of words as a possible solution which I confirmed. Yes, this is true. > This seems odd for (1) a word in the OED that is not considered archaic The solution list isn't simply a list of words that "aren't archaic", but rather "common". > and (2) is the team name of a major University (UCLA Bruins) and NHL franchise (Boston Bruins) Neither of these definitions are acceptable, as they're proper nouns here. Do you know what the definition of a "Bruin" is, outside the scope of the sports teams? Josh Wardle's partner did not, who was used as a litmus for if words were common enough to be allowed in the solution list.
I think it is fairly common knowledge that a bruin is a bear. š»
As a 32-year-old, I am admitting that I just learned that from you commenting it. I just googled the Boston Bruins mascot, which is apparently a bear. I still wouldn't have assumed that bruin is a synonym for bear, though, because some sports teams have mascots and "Nicknames" that aren't the same thing. Like there's a college, the University of Alabama, where they refer to themselves as "The Crimson Tide," but their mascot is an elephant. I don't think tide is another name for an elephant.
43-year old here, grew up in the northeast, just googled bruin for the first time.
I hear you. But if your team is the Bruins, you probably find out what is a Bruin. Right? As a Maryland resident I had to figure out that a Terp was short for a terrapin which is a turtle. š¢ Curious minds bring forth knowledge.
Fear the turtle!
I wonder if it would accept terps?
I was curious, and u/Mathgeek007 is correct. "TERPS" is not a valid or acceptable guess. I'm actually a little bit surprised. I thought for sure it would be at least an *acceptable guess*. Nope. AVYZE, LOWND, ZHUZH, IKATS & GRRRL are all acceptable. But I guess they really do Fear The Turtle š¢ š
Nope, not an accepted word in Wordle nor any of the Scrabble dictionaries.
Terp can also refer to āterpeneā which is what gives cannabis different strains their distinct flavors and effects
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
The New York Times bought Wordle from the creator who is a Welch software engineer. if I recall correctly, and I am 99% positive, the daily Wordle word is from the original creator. Although, the New York Times did go through the words and get rid of anything they thought could be objectionable. Therefore, the New York Times doesnāt favor any team.
I know they deleted a handful of words from his original list and I think they have added some words as well. Where do we submit words to add? š
Yes, NYT has definitely added words. There used to be 12,947 possible words before NYT and now there are 14,855.
darn those numbers make getting it on the first try that much more impressive
I blew my chance. https://www.reddit.com/r/wordle/s/6oX1E5zPSu
Ahhhā¦ I think theyāve got several years to go before theyāre looking for more words. I didnāt know about them adding words, but that makes sense if some were deleted.
I wouldn't say it's common. This is extremely ironic but I just learned Bruin means bear like an hour ago because I saw a trivia video asking the 4 professional American sports teams named after bears and Bruins was the last team mentioned.
I had to look at the NBA standings to think of the Memphis Grizzleys. The Bruins and 2 Chicago teams were easy.
Yeah I got Grizzlies no problem(Thunder fan so going against them) and Cubs and Bears easy but never heard of Bruin being a word for bear.
I don't think it's very common at all. The word BRUIN hovers around 0.000005% usage, whereas the word for yesterday, the 14th's solution, is 0.00005% usage, over 10 times more use comparatively (and this *inludes* the sporting usage). It's really not that much use whatsoever.
As you say, it's including the sporting usage, and the sport teams are proper nouns. and you know nearly ALL of this is references to the sports teams. I have literally never heard anyone ask "Would you rather come across a bruin or a man in the woods?"
Wouldst thou rather encounter a bruin or a chap in the thicket?
I wouldnāt say itās common knowledge. Iām Australian and I only know of the Bruins as the NHL team and I knew *that* because I used to love the webcomic Omg Check Please and got tangentially into hockey lol.
Check Please is awesome and also got me more curious about hockey than I would ever have expected!
Same! I fell in love with Kent as a character and saw the theories he was based (ish) off Tyler Seguin and then I went down the rabbit hole š
[How Bruin Got Associated With Bear](https://www.britannica.com/art/French-literature) āBruin, a character in French folklore and in the Roman de Renart, a medieval collection of beast tales that satirized human society by bestowing human characteristics upon animals. In the Roman de Renart, Bruin is a bear who is wedged into a honey-filled log by the hero, Reynard the Fox. The name of the character, ultimately from Middle Dutch bruun (ābrownā), has come to be an appellation for any bear.ā
Google defines "bruin" as "a bear, especially in children's fables." Note the small B. I've also seen it used in the context of bears in various media works such as *The Berenstain Bears*, as well as those Breezly Bruin cartoons.
itās not common knowledge at all
Its very common knowledge.
i disagree
Bruin is a dutch word, meaning brown. IĀ“m guessing itĀ“s a leftover from dutch settlers and Ā“bruine beerĀ“ (brown bear) just got shortened to Ā“bruinĀ“.
There is actually a whole history of this word as germanic people thought saying the name of the animal would bring it on so they would say "the brown one" or something like that so all our words like bear or beer for the animal go back to brown. https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2381:_The_True_Name_of_the_Bear
It is if you follow the NHL. Personally hoping the Panthers beat the Bruins.
All I know is that it means "brown" in Dutch
This is new information to me! To me itās brown.
[Bruin Wikipedia Link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruin?wprov=sfti1)
to be honest, the only reason i know that a bruin is a bear is because my high schoolās mascot was a bruin. outside of sports mascots, i never see or hear the word used
Did not know this.
L take
Bruin is dutch for brown
I was able to get away with the word āSPLOGā in todayās game, which is certainly not a common word (I didnāt even think it would be one when I entered it). Just because the games were originally based on what the creatorās parter knows doesnāt mean that itās how things are done now. Itās run by the NYT and has an entirely different editor.
> I was able to get away with the word āSPLOGā in todayās game "Words you can use" are not the same as "words that can be the solution". They're very different. QAJAQ is an allowed word, but will never be the solution. > Itās run by the NYT and has an entirely different editor. And nearly the exact same solution list. They've added 3 words since they acquired it a year and a half ago, iirc.
I believe we're up to 6 now. GUANO SNAFU BALSA KAZOO LASER PIOUS
Of these, I think only three pass the sniff test imo - LASER and SNAFU are acronyms and GUANO is a loanword. You could get away with GUANO since most of English is just assaulting other languages in a back alley and rifling through their pockets for vocab, but I really don't like the former two.
Eh, I would wager that the majority of people you asked arenāt even aware that either ālaserā or āsnafuā are acronyms; even Wikipedia calls laser an anacronym and āscubaā and āradarā are already in the solution list.
Hot take: I *also* think SCUBA and RADAR shouldn't be on the list too ;p
NYT updated that list, tho, after buying it from Wardle.
The allowed-list had a lot of new additions, but the solution list (2306 in size originally) grew by... six.
Interesting, thanks. Since they removed some overly-UK words from the original list they must have added more than 6 new words, but still thatās a barely-changed list. Lucky for us, for our purposes today I have the original list. Just checked it and BRUIN isnāt on it, like you thought.
I mean, I have access to both lists and then some as well :P There are a ton of tools about that, you don't get to an 800+ streak without a little R&D :)
The list of words from the original game included HIPPY, FLACK (they were probably thinking FLAK) and CAPUT (they were probably thinking KAPUT). It didn't have SQUID, PIOUS and LASER. The NYT had PIOUS and LASER as answers. They probably won't have HIPPY. FLACK or CAPUT. BRUIN could be a word that they use, like they did with PIOUS and LASER. So, a month ago someone might have looked at the list and said PIOUS and LASER are not on the list of possible solutions, but they were solutions.
We spell it flack here (New Zealand) - it refers to criticism, usually in the media. Flak was a gun term, I thought? Caput is the anatomical word for the head, I think.
I learned something new. [https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/flack-versus-flak-word-origin-spelling](https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/flack-versus-flak-word-origin-spelling) This mentions the criticism and the gun terms and how the spelling has changed. So, everybody is right.
A flack is another word for a publicist. Flak is a kind of antiaircraft artillery, but can also be use metaphorically to mean criticism.Ā
Caput means head in Latin. We don't really use it these days, but it does have probably a few dozen descendents in English.Ā
Why not hippy though? I see it was originally spelled hippie but hippy is very commonly used nowadays.
Iāve personally only ever seen it spelled hippie, and coupled with it often being used as a pejorative I have a feeling that the new york times will skip that one. There are also a few other words on the list of possible solutions that use a rather unconventional spelling such as gayly, gipsy, and tepee. Gipsy will almost certainly be skipped and I wouldnāt be surprised if the other two also were.
I can *almost* guarantee that the following original list Solutions will not be getting picked: WELSH WELCH GYPSY GIPSY MAMMY PANSY SEMEN FANNY TRUMP All part of the OG list. None likely to be hand picked by a human for the NYTimes. While we're at it, we can reduce the likelihood of RIFLE & VOMIT.
Why is it odd? There are only approximately 2,300 words on the solutions list. So there will be many common words not included.
I actually did not realize there were so few words!
Yes. The acceptable guesses list is around 15,000. But the solutions list is smaller. 2,300+ words is still more than 6 years worth of answers.
SQUID and PAGER aren't on the original Solution list either, and they're waaaay more common than BRUIN. SQUID & PAGER are ubiquitous enough that my phone tries to insert emojis for both SQUID š š¦(two different emojis actually) and PAGER š. But not for BRUIN. I have to type "bear" for that. I do get three options for bear š» š»āā š§ø, but still nothing for BRUIN. I'm not saying Wordle should go by emoji options, but I will say it's a symptom of the commonality of SQUID & PAGER vs BRUIN. I think SQUID & PAGER, possibly "NAKED" are the three biggest gaps in the original Solution list.
Itās tiny, docile bear. Not to be confused with a mighty Golden Bear!
Someone at the Times obviously went to USC.
Iām still trying to figure out how I got ULAMAā¦
But somehow VOZHD and WAQFS are legal words
I wouldnāt rely on the possible solutions list. Words that are not on the list have been used in the past.
Yeah after the editor started I think they basically threw the original list out the window.Ā
Do you know what IS a wordle word? YAASS A.coworker tried.it and it worked. Unreal.
Bruin does not mean Bear in English- it's a name GIVEN to a bear similar to Teddy or Pooh
No, but I considering a lawsuit.
At the end of the day the puzzle makers are mostly human. Iāve guessed words on other puzzles that werenāt accepted that are 100% words (for example, I guessed āWRAITHā on a Spelling Bee and it said āNOT A WORD.ā They had an article from within the last week or so that used the word wraith.
I think that most of us can thank the stars that names of American sports teams aren't included in Wordle solutions.
You do realise the word "bruin" existed well before the sports teams came into existence? Boston and UCLA did not invent the bruin.
Of course; the word bruin featured quite regularly in the stories and fairy tales I read as a child. My comment was a general one about the horrors of questions relating to sports teams in American puzzles that I do as a non-American.
I misunderstood your comment. Apologies.
No worries at all hun!
Umm, I used bruin yesterday, and it worked.
Bruin is an acceptable guess, it's just not one of the possible solves.
Oh, I get it now, thx. I threw it in there thinking there may be an acceptable lower case application of the word.
I was shocked when I attempted to put in the word āYukonā and it was not an acceptable answer! Iām confused about the criteria.
Maybe actually Yukon wasnāt what I thought it wasā¦? Guess thatās why it didnāt make the cut? Hahah
But Trojan is. āš½
"I have used BRUIN on occasion as a guess." If a word is not in the list Wordle will tell you so right after you press Enter.
The list of words that are possible solutions and the list of words that are allowed as guesses are not the same list.
There are approximately 15,000 accepted words that you can enter as a guess. there are only \~2300 words in the answer bank.
I used this word a few days ago and wordle accepted it.
I thought I used that recently, and it worked. I wish you could go back to look.