As expected, I missed a lot of yesterday’s answers. I mean I barely cleared genius, so there’s no surprise there. Tonight will be the same type of result. Some of my misses were reasonable, and some of my misses were silly.

EFFETE: This is a new word to me, and this is my understanding of what it means: The quality of someone who is so schooled in something that they lose all relevance to the real world.
FEINT: I know this word. I convinced myself that I should have gotten this one, but I fooled myself!
FETTLE: I had never heard this word before, but it simply means condition as in state of being. I find the etymology to be interesting and not intuitive.
FIEF: I don’t fault myself for missing it, but now I know to look for it.
FLEE:
INFLICT: ???
LEFT: Dude, I don’t even know.
LEFTIE: I’m used to this word ending in a y. So IDK what you want from me, NYT Spelling Bee.

Today I struggled throughout the day to break through the genius barrier. I was at 189 points from 45 words–just one point shy of genius. Finally NARRATOR pushed me over.

There were two pangrams I found today. ROTUNDA was the first, but then Calah said she found a pangram. She said hers started with a T. A T? So I dug around and found the 10-letter TURNAROUND. So go Calah for getting that behemoth a few words into the puzzle.

Final score: 46 words for 197 points.
First word: RATATAT