I would like to register a strongly-worded complaint against my own brain chemistry

[edenfalling]

I looked at my recent actions on Saturday and said, "Oh, I'm in the middle of a blue funk. That's why everything suddenly became Too Much all the time, why my sleep schedule has gone to shit, and probably also why I've fallen headfirst into hate-playing the New York Times Spelling Bee game -- I don't have a shiny new fandom in which I can go on an obsessive reading binge, so word games are apparently the next best thing."

Celexa does wonders for my baseline anhedonia, but it does sweet fuck-all for the periodic part of my clinical depression, which I like to anti-affectionately call blue funks or brain-down-a-well episodes. I just have to slog through until they let up, which fortunately only takes 1-3 weeks.

...

I am two words short of a clean sweep of today's Spelling Bee, I know how many letters are in each word and what two-letter combo they start with (I am not a purist, the hints are there to be used), and one of them is the fucking pangram, and I am going to wind up falling asleep without beating this goddamn puzzle and it is driving me nuts.

I don't think I've ever hate-played a game before and it's a weird experience so far. :/

Comments

[branchandroot]

*hugs* Depression sucks. It's just so deeply offensive that one can't logic out of it.

[autumnia]

Ahh, the love-hate relationship with word games. I also play the Mini crossword and the Bee as well -- usually playing with/against a friend. There's a guy on Twitter who will usually post some hints to the spelling bee answers that day if you want to try to guess with a real clue. He used to post more detailed hints but not as much these days; it's still worth a look if you're interested.

Are you also in the evil that is Wordle?

[edenfalling]

*hugs back* It really is.

[edenfalling]

The Mini is fun, and I genuinely enjoy Wordle. Crosswords in general are hit-or-miss, depending on my mood and the obtuseness (deliberate or otherwise) of the clues -- sometimes they're fun and sometimes I want to scream.

I also enjoy the USA Today mahjong solitaire game, even though I almost invariably lose it -- I treat it like actual card solitaire games, such as Patience, which you are mathematically guaranteed to lose quite often.

I have discovered that I also enjoy the NY Times vertex game, probably because it's forgiving in the way the undo button works -- it will only undo "unfinished" lines, and won't touch any triangles that are correctly completed.

[autumnia]

I couldn't really get into Vertex even though I've tried playing it several times. Letter Boxed was fun for a while but I got annoyed with it as the goal is to mainly use all the letters in 2 words.

[edenfalling]

I haven't even tried Letter Boxed, because I looked at the rules and determined that playing it would only make me furious. *wry*