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     BELABORING (63)

This entry follows BELABARTOK in the 79S list, and when I initially read it, I felt like the list was making a sassy critique of Hungarian classical music: “BELA BARTOK? BELA BORING!”

     BEWITCHING (65)

I’ve worked on this project long enough that I have developed an automatic sense of score adjustments for variant forms of a given word. Once I determine the basic range (based on clue value, interesting letters, etc.) the standard hierarchy is: singular noun gets the highest score, plural noun is lower, adjective/present-tense verb lower still, and all other verb tenses are the lowest. Certain entries call for exceptions of that ordering. I scored BEWITCH 65 and BEWITCHES 63. If BEWITCHING were only a verb it would also score 63, but it’s a reasonable adjective so I gave it 65. BEWITCHED scores 70 because of the television title. So the BEWITCH hierarchy is notably exceptional…bewitching, you might say.

     BLITHERING (60)

I don’t think I’ve ever heard the someone use the verb BLITHER/S/ED in conversation. The synonymous BLATHER is clearly more popular, unless you want to describe a nonsense-talking idiot, in which case BLITHERING is the way to go. So the one-trick pony BLITHERING gets the high score of the BLITHER forms.