I understand the desire to brag about getting to Queen Bee. I get it exceedingly rarely, so I know it’s a major accomplishment. Promote your accomplishments for sure!

The issue I have is that I happen upon the scores that yield the Queen Bee badge. I don’t want to know those scores. I don’t want hints. I don’t want solutions without agreeing to get them. I see the spoilers, and I don’t feel like I’ve agreed to seeing that.

Now, posting stuff has been a journey for me. When I started off, nobody cared what I had to write. And appropriately so. I didn’t even realize that it was an issue for me to have as the featured image of a blog post that day’s NYT Crossword grid.

But then people started to read what I write.

And someone reached out in horror that I’d post the solution in a non-hidden way. I, too, was horrified that I’d ruined others’ enjoyment of solving the crossword and forever changed what I use as the featured image.

When I post screenshots from my phone, I block out the score and the words I’ve gotten.

I schedule my blog to post at 11:58pm so I don’t interfere with anyone’s fun for that day.

Today it really got me when I saw that there were lots of posts with the Queen Bee final scores. Some within an hour of midnight. If that weren’t enough, one that was posted only about an hour after the puzzle was released had the final score both in the screenshot and the tweet text.

I know that a solution is to delete twitter/not use twitter. Some might advise not to follow people who post scores early in the day.

I am not going to stay off twitter because that’s not a reasonable solution.

And I don’t have to follow the people who post their scores to see them. I see those tweets accidentally when people like the tweets or reply to them. So I’m stuck.

I like being part of the #hivemind community. I really do. I like that we have a thing to solve every day, and I like the camaraderie. I enjoy having something to write about to daily, too.

I’m not saying don’t brag about Queen Bee. I’m not saying that people shouldn’t post screenshots of the Queen Bee badge. My feeling is what I wrote at the beginning of this: Promote your accomplishments for sure!

My request is that people not post the word count and score.

I used to try to solve for Queen Bee, but knowing what it takes to get there takes part of the fun away from me.

I don’t think I’m the only one who feels this way.

I’m not going to reply to all those tweets with this request. This will serve as my appeal to the community to be considerate of those of us who don’t want hints.

Maybe twitter should have a spoiler feature like on reddit. Then it would be easy for all.

Thanks for reading this, and happy solving!

-Matt