Spelling Wasp

Context

This puzzle was written for the official program for the 2021 National Puzzler’s League Convention. If this is a thing that you find fun, you might enjoy the National Puzzler’s League.

Instructions

Hello everyone and welcome to Spelling Wasp! It’s like a Spelling Bee, but meaner. This game is played in teams of approximately three. If you don’t have a team of three at home, that’s fine, play as you like.

You’ll need a scoresheet. You can download the official version at this link, or you can recreate it on a piece of paper. Whatever works for you. There were two other physical materials, but they’ll be available down the page.

Rules

Spelling Wasp is played in eight rounds. At the beginning of each round, the category will be available in that section. Your team is going to come up with one word that fits that category. At the end of 3 minutes, I will link you to a pdf, which contains all possible answers. If your answer is in the pdf AND it is spelled correctly, you get 1 point for each letter in the word that you’ve spelled.

Sounds easy right? Well hold on there.

Before your answer is scored it goes through something called the Wasp Cutoff. The Wasp Cutoff cuts off your answer the first time it spells any word, whether or not that word is in the indicated category. For example, if you intended to spell GARFIELD the president, the Wasp Cutoff would give you GAR as the fish, and you would score 3 points. There are more examples from this category on the sheet.

The Wasp Cutoff wordlist is created from a downloaded wordlist from the online Merriam-Webster, but all one-letter entries, capitalized entries, abbreviations, entries that require a non-alphabetic letter, and archaic words are removed. In addition, all non-alphabetic characters (including spaces) have been stripped from potential answers before checking them through the Wasp Cutoff, and those characters are not necessary to be considered “spelled correctly”. There were judgment calls that were made while making this list. Like a baseball umpire, my strike zone may not be exactly what you think it is, but I hope it’s consistent.

A couple final notes before we begin. If you are lucky enough to pick a word that the Wasp Cutoff doesn’t trim, it doesn’t matter if that word is in the dictionary or not. You will score the full number of points for that word assuming that it is in the category. If you misspell something after the Wasp Cutoff, such as spelling Garfield G-A-R-F-E-I-L-D, you still score for that word – the Wasp Cutoff saved you. Also, this is a battle of the brains – please do not use any outside resources and please scroll down further on the page until you get to that part of the game.

Round 1

This first round is US States. Acceptable entries are the name of any of the 50 US States. Please time yourself for 3 minutes. Or not. Do what you want. There’s no time limit at home. (Treat that disclaimer as being on all of the times for the rest of the page.)

At the end of the 3 minutes, please score the using the round’s answer sheet.

Bonus Rule 1

Now it is time to introduce the bonus cards. You may open the spoiler below marked “Bonus Rule Number 1”. Throughout the game, you will have the opportunity to score bonus points for your words. For instance, this rule says that if your word is exactly 4 or 5 letters after the Wasp Cutoff, you score 3 bonus points.

Round 2

This next round is Elements. Acceptable entries are the name of any of the 118 elements from the Periodic Table of Elements. You have 3 minutes.

At the end of the 3 minutes, please score the using the round’s answer sheet.

Bonus Rule 2

You may open the spoiler below marked “Bonus Rule Number 2”. This rule also applies in addition to the previous one. Everyone knows that in the game of Spelling Wasp, you may only have 2 bonus rules at once. Fortunately, you only have two right now. We’ll deal with that eventuality when it happens.

Note that this rule cares about your word BEFORE the Wasp Cutoff, which means that it gets the whole word, even the point that will be cut off by the Wasp. But because of that, you only get points for this one if the whole word is spelled correctly.

Round 3

This next round is Oscar Winners for Best Picture. Any Best Picture Winner in the history of the prize is acceptable, but the list does including leading articles, such as “THE” and “AN”, so I wouldn’t recommend picking those. You have 3 minutes.

At the end of the 3 minutes, please score the using the round’s answer sheet.

Bonus Rule 3

You may open the spoiler below marked “Bonus Rule Number 3”. This is your third bonus rule, but you can only hold two bonus rules at a time. Your team must choose which two of the three you have to keep, and you must get rid of the third one. (This includes getting rid of the rule you just got.) You have 1 minute.

Round 4

The next round is code names for either Android Operating Systems or Mac Operating Systems version OS X 10 or greater. If you have never heard these before, a slight hint is that Android OS versions were code named after different types of dessert and many Mac OS X versions were code named after animals. Also note that there is now a location on your answer sheet to indicate which two bonus rules you are using for that round. You have 3 minutes.

At the end of the 3 minutes, please score the using the round’s answer sheet.

Bonus Rule 4

You may open the spoiler below marked “Bonus Rule Number 4”. Once again, you can only keep 2 rules, so choose which two rules you would like to keep, and which one you are mercilessly ripping in half. You have one minute.

Round 5

The next round is the top 50 US Cities by Population. This was generated from a list of estimated 2020 population in each city. However, the most populous cities are pretty easy, so I will offer a bonus point if you pick a city that is number 26 through 50 on that list. Assuming, of course, that you spell it correctly. You have 3 minutes.

At the end of the 3 minutes, please score the using the round’s answer sheet.

Bonus Rule 5

You may open the spoiler below marked “Bonus Rule Number 5”. Once again, choose 2 rules to keep and 1 rule to get rid of. You have 1 minute.

Round 6

The next round is events in the Summer Olympic games. This list was generated from the official summer Olympics website and lists the events in the next summer Olympics. These are the top level categories that have icons. You have 3 minutes.

At the end of the 3 minutes, please score the using the round’s answer sheet.

Bonus Rule 6

You may open the spoiler below marked “Bonus Rule Number 6”. Once again, choose 2 rules to keep and 1 rule to get rid of. You have 1 minute.

Round 7

The next round is entries in the song We Didn’t Start the Fire. For example, the first entry of the song We Didn’t Start the Fire is Harry Truman. Truman would not be an acceptable answer. For the purpose of this activity, an entry in We Didn’t Start the Fire is the complete set of consecutive words that refer to the same subject. You have 3 minutes.

At the end of the 3 minutes, please score the using the round’s answer sheet.

Bonus Rule 7

You may open the spoiler below marked “Bonus Rule Number 7”. Note that this is the last rule you will get this game. Once again, choose 2 rules to keep and 1 rule to get rid of. You have 1 minute.

Round 8

Randall Munroe wrote a book called Up Goer Five, where he attempted to explain various complicated things using only the One Thousand most common words in the English language. For your final round, name any one of these words. You have 3 minutes.

At the end of the 3 minutes, please score the using the round’s answer sheet.

Results

Add up your score for each round to get your total score. You can compare how you did against the NPL at this spreadsheet.