AGORA is a rarely-used word and is probably not in the dictionary referenced by The NY Times for their word puzzles.
PUPAL may be mis-perceived as a misspelling of PUPIL and frustrate players. I don’t know… I’m guessing!
Though, I'd expect these to be moved to allowed guesses, there's some very obscure stuff in the allowed guess list.
Probably just a first pass by whoever's in charge of standards. Now I'm trying to guess if this was a simple pass with an "approved words" list, or if there was a mind-numbing meeting where they spent a day or two looking at words.
That said, I'll never forgive American English for what it did to Aluminium. The word Aluminium just sparkles and glitters like the metal itself, whereas Aluminum has a distinctly cold sound, like an echo in an empty hall early on a winter's morning.
https://nytspellingbeeanswers.org/nyt-spelling-bee-answers-0...