Letter Boxed March 07, 2025 Answers

Also –
Powerlifter – Rumpled
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I use my brain, but there are situations, like if I put in a word and it won’t take, that I sometimes turn to the dictionary to check if I’m spelling it correctly. So, like you, I don’t always solve because I have a life that pulls me away from it before I figure it out or sometimes because I’m truly stumped, and that’s generally, albeit no always, because the solution or solutions use words that are some obscurity, jargon, or oddball variant spelling.

Obviously, all the solutions I come up with are not in my speaking vocabulary, but I know them from seeing them or know some part of it and have just spitballed a prefix or suffix or put it together with another word I’ve found if it seems a likely compound word.

LB is different than scrabble because you can spitball. You just try something and it either takes or doesn’t take, like there’s no lost score or lost guess for doing so. So I imagine that others are like me, that they experiment to see if something will take, like today I found POWER and LIFT at different times, then seeing them on my page and having heard of “power-lifting,” that it’s some kind of sport, but I don’t know if I’ve ever seen it written, so I thought, “Well, maybe it’s a compound word.” I tried “powerlifted.” It didn’t take. I started to move on, but seeing the R over there, I just hit backspace and then gave it a shot and lo and behold, it took it. Strange that LB doesn’t see ‘powerlift’ as a verb, but does see someone carrying out the action, but I’ve learned that’s how Letter Boxed Rolls– very inconsistent. But that’s why I try stuff, so I’ve kind of incorporated that as being part of the game.

Anyway, the point is that, no, the words I come up with are often not in my working vocabulary, but, like a lot of others, I assume, I’m still solving it with just my brain. Of course, because there always those who do, some use cheats like word finders or descramblers or whatever, clearly, or else they’re spending all the livelong day every day on it. But, for me, I don’t really see the point of that, of using computer tools to solve a computer game, because there’s no sport in that. It’s just being a data entry cog between two computer systems that are doing all the work. I mean, if I wanted to be a data-entry clerk in my spare time, I’d just get a part-time job at it so I’d not be doing it for free but at least get the tuppence wage data-entry clerks earn for it. Or maybe I’m missing something and don’t fully understand people’s motives for using tools to come up with the solutions for them. Either way, I don’t use them. My solutions are mine.

Hope that helps. Great topic. Interesting answers. Thanks.

Yes, I use Python to generate SQL, which then hits the database. It took me about year to build it. The database is of my own making, merging giant lists, years ago. It was a big data operation, at least for me it was. In hindsight, it would probably have been better if I just used an OED API, but oh well.

Truth be told, my real joy in this game now is finding valid OED solutions that LB rejects. That’s gotta be a win! 🙂👍