I was mystified as to what the final four-letter word starting with "EN" might be, and finally landed on the four-letter combination "ENBY" and had to admit that I'd never heard of this short word before. This doesn't happen a lot. <img src="{att_link}enby.webp" href="{att_link}enby.webp" align="none" caption="NY Times Spelling Bee thinks 'Enby' is a word" scale="30%"> What the hell does it even mean? The <a href="https://www.thefreedictionary.com/enby">Free Dictionary</a> doesn't know what it is. <a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=enby&t=opera&ia=web" author="" source="">DuckDuckGo</a> returns a link to <a href="https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nichtbinäre_Geschlechtsidentität" author="" source="Wikipedia">Nichtbinäre Geschlechtsidentität</a> (my settings prefer Swiss-German results), which is the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-binary" author="" source="Wikipedia">Non-binary</a> (which is much less obviously related to gender than the German title), which allowed me to finally figure out that "enby" is a phoneticization of the letters "N" and "B". The only reason I'm pointing this out is that the NY Times's wokeness is still quite evident in this example, as they recognize a word that isn't in the dictionary but is <i>inclusive</i> and is, apparently, well-known enough among its customers, but they ignore <a href="{app}/view_article.php?id=3974#hall-of-shame">hundreds of other words</a> that I---and the dictionary---consider to be more or less common. They seem to be particularly stubbornly allergic to any word that might be <i>construed</i> as a slur but are also fiercely allergic to science words. Already back in 2021, I wrote the following note into the article linked above. <info><b>Update 15.05.2021:</b> After over a year of playing this puzzle, the patterns are pretty clear. Proper words are allowed if it's a fruit, fish, plant, flower, type of cheese, or songbird. Or if it has something to do with Judaism and Jewish tradition. <i>Minyan</i> was in the puzzle yesterday, which is a word simply <i>everyone</i> knows and uses every day. What is glaringly obvious is the anti-science, anti-math bent to this whole puzzle. Building blocks of reality, like <i>pion</i>, <i>muon</i>, and <i>lepton</i> aren't recognized, but obscure cacti are, as well as all manner of lilies, like <i>canna</i> and <i>calla</i>.</info> Where Judaic---minyan or tallit---and LGBTQ words---enby---feature prominently, science and engineering words---pion, muon, monadic, molal, decile, egyptology, enqueue, lexeme, moonlet, lidar, nacelle, fairing---regular words---midden, menage, drily, lungful, lede, monofin, nictitate, olla, phaeton, geegaw, gibbet, lamplit, immanent, headball, gnomon, gnomic, zoonotic---some of which might feel rare, but some of which are regularly used---and, finally, quasi-slurs---golliwog, chink, flatulate, gypped, ladyboy, minge, niggly, octaroon, polygyny, raping---don't. They even allow words like "gully" but not "wadi", which seems a bit racist. It's unclear why they choose to recognize "tomtit" but not "woodlark". These are decisions made by their editor that illustrate the shape of his and the paper's ideology.