Spelling Bee answers, pangrams and the solver — plus the rules nobody reads

Scoring and the ranks

Four-letter words are worth one point. Every longer word is worth its length: a five-letter word is five points, a seven-letter word is seven. A pangram earns a seven-point bonus on top of its length, so a seven-letter pangram is worth fourteen. Ranks are percentages of the day's maximum — Genius is 70% of the total and is what most players treat as finishing; Queen Bee is every word, and the game only tells you the total when you get there.

Because the maximum varies with the day's letters, the same score can be Genius on Tuesday and Amazing on Wednesday. The answer page shows each day's maximum so you can see what Genius actually required.

Which words count — the real editorial rules

The Bee uses a curated list, edited by Sam Ezersky, and it is deliberately narrower than a dictionary. The stated rules: no proper nouns, no hyphenated words, no obscure or offensive words. The unstated ones, learned from years of "why wasn't X accepted?": most plurals *are* accepted; most -ING and -ED forms are accepted; a lot of technical vocabulary is not; and the list changes over time as words enter common use. Letters are chosen so that S is never among the seven — which is why you rarely see a plural pangram — and the seven letters never include all five vowels.

Because the official list is not published, every answer site reconstructs it. HintSheet's list comes from a large public-domain dictionary filtered by the hive, which means it occasionally includes a word the Times rejects and, rarely, misses one it accepts. The answer page says so, and the pangram — which is what people actually come for — is almost never in doubt.

Finding the pangram on purpose

Pangram-hunting is a distinct skill, and it rewards structure rather than staring.

Start from the consonant cluster. Seven letters usually contain three or four consonants that combine in a limited number of ways (TR, ST, CH, PL…). Write down the plausible clusters and try to hang vowels off them.

Check for common suffixes. If the letters include I, N, G, the pangram very often ends in -ING. If they include T, I, O, N, look for -TION. E, D at the end and R, E, S in the middle are similarly productive.

Count vowels. A hive with two vowels forces a compact pangram (seven or eight letters); a hive with three vowels allows longer, looser ones. That tells you whether to look for a plain word or a compound.

Use the centre letter as a hinge. The centre letter must appear, and in pangrams it is often in the middle of the word. Try it as the third or fourth letter.

The 3 AM reset and why it matters

Unlike Wordle, Connections and Strands, Spelling Bee changes at 3:00 AM Eastern time, not midnight. Yesterday's puzzle stays live until then, which is why the game offers a "yesterday's answers" view and why HintSheet keeps the previous day's list reachable from the answer page. If you're playing late at night on the East Coast and the hive hasn't changed, that's why.

A Queen Bee routine

Genius is achievable by feel; Queen Bee — every word — needs a system, because the last five words are always the ones you'd never think of. The routine that works:

Pass one, pangrams. Use the consonant-cluster method above. Get every pangram before anything else; there is sometimes a second.

Pass two, systematic four-letter words. Take each consonant in turn as a starting letter and run it through every vowel-consonant pattern: BAND, BEND, BIND, BOND. This is mechanical and finds twenty words in five minutes.

Pass three, suffixes. Every word you have, try adding -S, -ED, -ER, -ING, -Y, -LY if the letters allow. The Bee accepts most inflections, and this pass typically adds a third to your count.

Pass four, the odd ones. What's left are the words that don't follow patterns: interjections (HAHA), loanwords (NAAN), repeated-letter oddities (TATTOO). The game's editor likes a few of these each day. The solver on this site lists them; the honest use is to check after you've given up.

Accepted words that surprise people

The Bee's list is idiosyncratic, and part of playing well is knowing its habits. A sample of words the game accepts that first-time players don't expect — and a few it rejects that they do.

The Spelling Bee Forum, and other help

The Times hosts a daily Spelling Bee Forum in the comments of its Bee column, where regulars post hints in a coded format — first two letters and length of each word — without spoiling. It is the closest thing to an official hint system and a good place to learn the game's habits. HintSheet's answer page is the blunt instrument by comparison: the full list, marked by length. Use whichever suits your mood; the forum is better for getting better, the list is better for getting Queen Bee at 11 PM.

Playing efficiently

Genius is reachable most days in twenty minutes with a routine: find the pangram first (it seeds the longer words), then run each consonant through the common four-letter patterns (consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel and the reverse), then add suffixes to everything you've found. The four-letter words are worth one point each and there are usually twenty or more of them; they are how you cross the last gap to Genius. The long, rare words are for Queen Bee hunters and are the ones a solver is genuinely useful for.

Reading the letter set before you start

The seven letters tell you what kind of day it is. A hive with a vowel in the centre (A, E, I, O, U) tends to have a long list — every word needs the centre letter and vowels are easy to include — and a high Genius threshold. A consonant centre, especially a rare one (J, K, X, Z), means a short list and a low threshold. Count the vowels among the outer six: two vowels and four consonants is the common layout; three vowels means many short words; one vowel means the list is dominated by one sound and the pangram is often a compound.

Check for the productive pairs — N with G (for -ING), T with I and O (for -TION), E with D and R — and for the letters that combine poorly, like J or Q, which almost always sit at the start of the pangram.

A daily routine that reaches Genius in fifteen minutes

Written down because it's what actually works, not what feels clever.

• Read the seven letters and say them aloud once. Count vowels.
• Find the pangram(s) using the cluster and suffix checks. Two minutes.
• Run every consonant through C-V-C-V and C-V-C-C four-letter patterns. Five minutes.
• Add -S, -ED, -ER, -ING, -Y to everything found. Three minutes.
• Check the score against the day's maximum on the answer page; if Genius is within ten points, look for one more six-letter word rather than five four-letter ones.
• Stop. Queen Bee is a separate hobby.

Reader questions

"Why is yesterday's list still up at 1 AM?" The Bee changes at 3 AM Eastern.

"Does the answer page show the official maximum?" It shows the maximum for our computed list, which is close to and occasionally above the official one.

"Can I see the pangram without the whole list?" The pangram sits at the top of the answer page; stop reading there.

Glossary

Terms as used on this site.

• Hive — the seven letters, centre plus six.
• Pangram — a word using all seven letters; +7 bonus.
• Genius — 70% of the day's maximum.
• Queen Bee — every word.
• Bingo — a day when every letter starts at least one word (a community term, not the game's).

A weekly rhythm

Unlike the other Times games, the Bee has no deliberate weekday/weekend curve; difficulty follows the letters. What does follow a rhythm is the community: the Forum is busiest in the morning Eastern, and the hints there are most complete by mid-day. If you play at night, the answer page is the faster route; if you play in the morning, the Forum teaches more.

The four-letter floor, and why it's there

The Bee's minimum of four letters is what keeps the list manageable and the scoring meaningful: with three-letter words allowed, most hives would have two hundred words and the pangram bonus would be noise. The floor also shapes the play. Four-letter words are one point each and there are usually twenty to thirty of them; they're the bulk of the count and a small share of the score. The long words are the reverse. A player chasing Genius by count alone will stall at Amazing; a player who finds two eight-letter words has usually crossed the line. Aim for length once the four-letter sweep is done.

Frequently asked questions

Recent Spelling Bee answers

• Sep 2, 2026 — Center F · 31 words · 2 pangrams
• Sep 1, 2026 — Center A · 44 words · 1 pangram

Browse the full Spelling Bee archive or go back to today's puzzle answers across every game on HintSheet.