Here are the Letter Boxed August 19, 2024 Answers from New York Times Games. Our solutions and answers are 100% valid and accurate. We suggest trying to solve the game on your own before using the help of our website.
Sides of this Letter Box are:
XNIMALYJPEGF
The answers are:
JANGLEEXEMPLIFY
OA in five minutes. Very much looking forward to seeing if there are alternatives.
The only other one I found was with AJANGLE, interesting on it’s own right simultaneously as an adjective and adverb in OED.
Today’s LB brings to light the age-old question; is it just random, or is there some forethought in the game’s official solution. Days like today I think the evidence is overwhelming that it is the latter.
I bet official solutions are planned. But the larger question to my mind is why we need “official” solutions? Why not just call them puzzlemakers picks?
I think there are only two solutions today. Note that the puzzle becomes quite a bit more fun if you swap the “I” and the “Y”. Now there are at least six. Happy hunting! 😃
I like your PuzzleMaker Picks.
👍
I note the NYT merely calls it “Our Solution”. Naming it the OA is entirely on us, I believe. In fact, I believe it’s on me specifically!
Ditto TI and even ALIOW (which, before any newcomers need to ask, respectively Respectively meanThematic integrity and At Least It’s Over With). I get the feeling I’m the OG here. Where have all my original playmates gone? Sigh.
I believe those are you Bernie, and they have been great communication tools for the group, and especially “TI” for me.
I believe “PSW” is on DW, which has also been widely used to expand knowledge.
My “SSS” (suspected singular solution) never caught on, but I still like the concept. 🙂 It has to do with the timing of us finding solutions. If an SSS survives 24 hours without any counter-examples, then the OA becomes a true singular solution, SS (yours and others “one-offs”). ☕
What might have led you to coin “Official Answer” is the way this website presents it as THE Answer, not ONE answer (OA lite?).
You were on when I started visiting, Bernie, but no one else who is currently here… So I guess I’m the 2OG?
Are you considering solutions only as 2 word solutions?
New here! I play every day and am happy to see others who are just as excited about this game!
Just curious. I solved today’s in 3
EXEMPLIFY – YANG – GANJA
Agreed! Sometimes OA is inefficient with overuse of letters.
Hey Mark and Bernie, and everyone – as usual recently i am late to the party because i’ve been so busy on other things i get to the puzzles late.
But i like your comments!
1) SSS – i like that – keep using it Mark, and it will catch on with us, yes it’s Three letters and most of us hillbillies can’t spell beyond Two like OA and TI but SSS is nicely repetitive so eventually we’ll remember.
2) a bit of musing – is the real fun of the game wondering, before we come here to the forum, if our solution for the day is the Official Answer for the day?
3) And perhaps more than #2, is the best part trying to figure out why LB allows certain words and not others … are we just conspiracy theorists? … or is there a conspiracy in the game???
Either way, the game continues relentlessly every day …
😎🐝🇺🇸
Excellent consideration….took me forever to find the OA with many dead ends and few good words to work with aside from FLYMEN and FIGLEAF which stonewalled me quickly…
JANGLE
EXEMPLUFY
JANGLE – EXEMPLIFY
Marley’s ghost.
Ditto, and ditto.
Similar here, OA in 10.
OA quickly.
Same. Guessing this is single-solution day.
OA. Agree it may be the only solution.
Pretty sure it is in fact a one-off, except for Ajangle instead of Jangle, which I don’t think should count as an alternative answer. Jangle was forced like a card in a magic trick, and then Exemplify was the only way to go. The first thing I pictured from the OA wasl those little “vibration” lines in comic strips that signify alarm, surprise, and the like.
Hey Bernie – and everyone.
Probably like most of you, i solved this day’s LB by finding EXEMPLIFY and then seeing what letters were leftover.
“Jangle” is not a word that i use very often – but “Jingle” was impossible and also had to use the A also and so “Jangle” seemed to be the most efficient word to do that.
I’m curious how often other LBers use the word “Jangle”? Probably i would use either “grate/grating” or “clang/clanging” … i think 🤔.
Here’s OED entry for “Jangle”:
https://www.oed.com/dictionary/jangle_n?tl=true
OA
oa
OA after a couple of expletives looking at the board. Knew it had to be a one or two-off (Mark seems to find something!). Love the PuzzleMaker Pick moniker!
JANGLE — EXEMPLIFY
Got XYLEM right away but it leaves too many letters. Once I got EXEMPLIFY I knew that I had to connect to the E which turned out to be very quick.
What seems odd to me is that even on the days where there are only one or two solves, inevitably, lots and lots of people still get find them. Anyway, I think I prefer the days where there are dozens and dozens of solves. It’s fun to see what people come up with, and interesting TI!
Absolutely!
I prefer the plentiful days too. More TI action, more fun, etc..
🙂
Yes!
Holy moly!! This was by far the hardest LB ever for me. I struggled for ages to get any solution, even after giving myself an unlimited number of words. Eventually I found JANGLY YIP PIE EXPEL LIME ELF. Can’t believe the OA is so simple. I expected a sciency word that I hadn’t heard of to be involved.
I agree completely!
Yesterday was another defeat for me. I looked at today’s for a while and didn’t see a quick solution so I slept on it. When I came back with a fresh mind I got JANGLE EXEMPLIFY very quickly.
A super frustrating day yesterday after hours and then a 15 minute Jangle — Exemplify today.
Similarly I visited this in the morning and couldn’t see a solution. But came back after work following several hours and got the OA almost immediately. The brain is amazing when it re-engages in a task after a break. 🧠
OA. Quickly. J was the key (as opposed to the X)
I find that is generally the case!
OA quickly after being disheartened by the letters.
OA in about 20 minutes, but I didn’t see exemplify until after I got jangle. I almost always get the “X” word first.
Whoa
Fastest solve I’ve ever had. JANGLE was first word I saw and found EXEMPLIFY just by trying to fill in the blanks, so about 10-20 seconds. Usually I’m much much slower so it’s kind of a nice feeling 😅
jangle – exemplify
jangle, exemplify – very limited to…
Same OA
OA. Not a particularly tedious solve, but I feel I should have seen the I-F-Y much sooner, which would have made it a super-fast solution, I think.
I totally agree. If you see IFY it’s done. Took me a while to catch on
Started with GANJA which might explain why it took me a long time to get the OA. 🙂
The Jangle/Ajangle pattern got me thinking about just how common, or rare, these cases are. I ran a small program to count the number of cases, grouped by letter counts.
LETTERS | COUNT | EXAMPLE
3 | 601 | FAR, AFAR
4 | 1072 | LIKE, ALIKE
5 | 1091 | BLAZE, ABLAZE
6 | 881 | WAKENS, AWAKENS
7 | 635 | LOGICAL, ALOGICAL
8 | 315 | BASEMENTS, ABASEMENTS
Without proof, it seems to peak at 5 and trail off to 0 from there. Sometimes the “A” negates the first word, sometimes it expands it’s meaning, and sometimes it’s a different meaning altogether.
Can you add the total number of words per letter length? I am thinking that it will match the “A” frequency, but maybe not!
Yes I shall add that Bill.
We’ll then see the correlation.
I’m certain my counts will be lower than actual Webster and OED, with mine being a subset of those. In fact I’m just now overcoming an early design defect. I was missing the plurals of tens of thousands of words. I’ve been patching piecemeal all this year.
I just spotted a typo. Case 8 should have read:
BASEMENT, ABASEMENT
OA
Here is the full list. There are no Scrabble words today.
** Don’t look at the list if you haven’t finished solving the puzzle **
(The first number is a count and the second number is the number of letters used)
1 – 15 jangle / exemplify
2 – 16 ajangle / exemplify
OA, Looked impossible, I thought it was going to have at least one word I’d never heard of. Was going to quit, but it actually came quite quickly
6 letter words in today’s solution
agnail
anemia
apemen
axemen
flymen
gangle
gangly
gilgai
jangle
jangly
leanly
lexeme
limply
mielie
meanly
melena
nagana
paepae
papaya
penmen
piemen
pigmen
pigpen
pimple
pimply
xylene
gagmen
eagley
melene
mganga
naifly
pagany
paigle
panele
panfan
pengle
7 letter words in today’s solution
agilely
anaemia
empanel
impanel
epigyny
figleaf
flyleaf
ganglia
leangle
lipemia
pigmean
ajangle
exemply
gangmen
nagapie
paganly
piaimen
pipemen
8 letter words in today’s solution
lipaemia
9 letter words in today’s solution
exemplify
You can see tat it was a very short wordlist today. There were no words over 9 letters.
the words are not in alphabetical order
I found these 3 worders…
JANE / EXEMPLIFY / YAG
GANJA / ANGLE / EXEMPLIFY
I couldn’t find a 3 worder without using EXEMPLIFY