Pangrams
Solution
We might initially notice between the hexagonal flowers, bee art, and the puzzle's title that this is a riff on the New York Times Spelling Bee, where solvers are given 7 letters and must make words containing those letters. There is always at least one pangram, which is a word using all 7 letters (and can contain duplicates). The first step in this puzzle is to solve for the 7 letterbanks. Due to them being Bee-style letterbanks, they must all be 7 letters with no duplicates, which should provide some confirmation in addition to them being in alphabetical order.
| Clue | Letterbank |
|---|---|
| Religious assistant or follower | ACOLYTE |
| Largest of their frequently-canned genus | BLUEFIN |
| Frequented by a ghost | HAUNTED |
| Roaming or migrant | NOMADIC |
| Clip or abridge | SHORTEN |
| Relating to foxes | VULPINE |
| D&D class with patrons | WARLOCK |
Next, we try to solve the clues with multi-word pangrams made from the letterbanks above. After each clue is a pair of numbers, where the second, larger number is the length of the intended pangram and the first, smaller number is the index of the letter we should extract.
LAW ROCK and EVIL PUN/VILE PUN are both potential break-ins, as their 7-letter length makes the pangrams much easier to find. We might also notice that there are 21 total clues, which implies we'll use each of the 7 letterbanks 3 times.
| Clue | Pangram | Letterbank | Extracted Letter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Top-notch tulip (5/8) | FINE BULB | BLUEFIN | B |
| Way to identify which of these celebrities mugged you (7/9) | VIP LINEUP | VULPINE | E |
| Chicken body (2/8) | HEN TORSO | SHORTEN | E |
| Underwhelming siege weapon (5/9) | MID CANNON | NOMADIC | A |
| What most of these answers are, honestly. (5/7) | EVIL PUN/VILE PUN | VULPINE | P |
| A Ten Commandments slab could be called a... (4/7) | LAW ROCK | WARLOCK | R |
| What one might do by taking itty-bitty bites of cotton candy (6/11) | NIBBLE FLUFF | BLUEFIN | E |
| “Toss me a Coke!” (8/9) | YEET A COLA | ACOLYTE | L |
| Occasion for a fishy funeral (6/9) | TUNA DEATH | HAUNTED | E |
| I moved to Kitsburg! I was tired of the ruff neighborhoods living... (6/10) | IN PUPVILLE | VULPINE | V |
| Timid coffee order (8/8) | COY LATTE | ACOLYTE | E |
| Original fratricide emotion (4/8) | CAIN MOOD | NOMADIC | N |
| Alternate transportation if "buy car" is too expensive (4/9) | RENT HORSE | SHORTEN | T |
| When a bulletin board isn't big enough, get a... (5/8) | CORK WALL | WARLOCK | W |
| She's the family reunion leader (2/8) | HEAD AUNT | HAUNTED | E |
| If the community cards include 10, J, Q, K, one might... (8/9) | BLUFF NINE | BLUEFIN | N |
| Exam for brass players (5/8) | HORN TEST | SHORTEN | T |
| Opposite of a qualified Roadrunner (6/9) | LAY COYOTE | ACOLYTE | Y |
| I don’t want to play Uprising or Imperium because I... (3/8) | HATE DUNE | HAUNTED | T |
| “Check out this pretty black bird!” (9/9) | LOOK A CROW | WARLOCK | W |
| Hoover, for instance (3/9) | ICONIC DAM | NOMADIC | O |
This gives us the clue phrase BEE APR ELEVEN TWENTY TWO. Remembering that this puzzle is a riff on the NYT Spelling Bee, or entering that phrase into a search engine, we find the Spelling Bee puzzle from April 11th 2022. This Bee has a letterbank of [B,D,O,R,U,W,Z] and only one pangram – the answer to this puzzle – BUZZWORD.
Authors' Notes
The two of us solve the Spelling Bee pangram together every day, and as part of that we often find other silly pangram phrases and clue them to each other. This brings us a lot of joy, so we wanted to turn it into a puzzle mechanic.
Connor first heard NIBBLE FLUFF as a way to describe a kitten. He is pleased he could write it in as a pangram. Jacqui especially loves the simplicity of the answer LOOK A CROW, and it's been referenced an excessive amount of times between us since we wrote the clue.
While iterating, we had to shuffle things around to extract one of [P,U,N] for "What most of these answers are, honestly. (5/7)" because EVIL PUN and VILE PUN are both reasonable pangrams for that clue.
You might have seen our special message "Fun Fact: NYT released two different Spelling Bees on this day! You want the other one." if LAVATORY was entered as an answer. During the test solving process, we found out that apparently this is one of very few days that there were two NYT Bees, due to a technical error by the NYT. What are the odds?