This week, Ryan is in Hawaii so Brian is joined by Ben "The Barnacle" Zimmer! It's a super-sized episode jam-packed with Word of the Year reflections, New York Times crosswords in the Thunder Round, a little behind-the-scenes at Daily Crossword Links, Wordle (the wildest new word puzzle craze), and an assortment of nonsense including knitting, darning, and a soupçon of meat references.

Find more of Ben Zimmer on Twitter and on his other podcast, Spectacular Vernacular.

There's a new contest crossword, which you can download at https://bit.ly/fmi328con

Stuff to click:

• Daily Crossword Links
• American Dialect Society's Word of the Year announcement
• Jeff Davidson's Crosswordle #1
• The New York Times's article about Wordle
• The New York Times Diverse Crossword Constructor Fellowship
• Boswords, and the upcoming Winter Wondersolve
• The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament
• Cracking the Cryptic's take on Wordle
• The Wordle game itself, in case you haven't found it yet
• Damon Gulczynski's blog, Joe Pancake
• The bagel video Brian talked about

If you get bored, write something for the Fill Me In wiki.

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