Eve Washington Josh Katz and Tom Giratikanon

“Honey” easily attracted Bee adherents, but players had only isolated success with “abbacy.”

There’s nothing tragic about missing this week’s toughest word, other than the word itself.

To play this game, you can’t have a thin skin, but this week it helped to be familiar with one.

This week, Spelling Bee players chose to quit to get ahead.

To reach Genius, you had to milk this week’s toughest word for all it was worth.

At minimum, you needed to be familiar with what a quorum was.

If you succeeded in getting this week’s toughest word, don’t be shy — feel free to trumpet it.

No amount of exhortation could help with this week’s toughest word.

Another example of how an excellent vocabulary is the currency of this realm.

Cornered, many players had to face the music with “plena.”