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

Scoring and the ranks

The game's How to Play panel sets the scoring: four-letter words are worth one point each, longer words earn one point per letter, and each puzzle includes at least one pangram worth 7 extra points, so a seven-letter pangram is worth fourteen. Ranks are percentages of the day's maximum, rounded to whole points in the game's code. Genius needs 70% of the total; Queen Bee is every word, and the game keeps that rank hidden in its list until you reach it.

Because the maximum varies with the day's letters, the same score can be Genius one day and Amazing the next. In the 40 hives from 1 September to 10 October 2026 the maximum ran from 60 points (9 September) to 431 (27 September), so Genius needed anything from 42 to 302 points. 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, and the game page credits Sam Ezersky as editor. The stated rules, from the How to Play panel: words must contain at least four letters and include the centre letter; the word list does not include words that are obscure, hyphenated or proper nouns; "no cussing either, sorry"; and letters can be used more than once. Anything else is learned from the lists themselves. In the 40 hives from 1 September to 10 October 2026 no hive contained the letter S and none contained all five vowels, which is why plurals never come up; inflections that the letters allow, such as DEFUNDED and VEGGING, do appear.

The Times does not publish its whole dictionary, but it does publish each day's answers: the game page carries the full list of accepted words for today and yesterday. HintSheet's daily answer pages are built from that list, so the words, pangrams and maximum shown there are the game's own. The solver is different: it searches a general public-domain dictionary and finds far more words than the game accepts, as its page explains. If you think the Times has missed a word, the game tells you where to say so: buzzwords@nytimes.com.

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. In the 40 hives from 1 September to 10 October 2026, seven hives contained I, N and G, and five of them had a pangram ending in -ING (NICKNAMING, CRIMPING, BLOTTING, VETOING, WHOOPING among them). Three hives contained T, I, O and N, and one of those had a -TION pangram (OXIDATION).

Count vowels — but don't over-read them. Two-vowel and three-vowel hives were about equally common (18 and 19 of 40), and the two-vowel ones produced the *longer* pangrams: 9.1 letters on average, against 8.1 for three-vowel hives. Fewer vowels did not mean a compact pangram; DIZZYINGLY came from a hive with one vowel.

Use the rarest letter as the anchor. A pangram must use every letter, so it must contain the hardest one. When the hive held a Q, J or X, the pangram was built around it: ACQUAINT on 18 September, JELLYBEAN on 21 September, EQUINOX on 22 September.

The 3 AM reset and why it matters

Unlike Wordle, Connections and Strands, which change at midnight on your own device's clock, Spelling Bee releases new puzzles daily at 3 a.m. Eastern, as its How to Play panel says. Yesterday's puzzle stays live until then. The game also keeps a "Yesterday's Answers" view, which is 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 few words are the ones you'd never think of. A routine that covers the ground:

Pass one, pangrams. Use the cluster and suffix checks above. Get every pangram before anything else; in the 40 hives from 1 September to 10 October 2026 15 days had two or more.

Pass two, systematic four-letter words. Take each consonant in turn as a starting letter and run it through the vowels: BAND, BEND, BIND, BOND. Four-letter words averaged 15 a day in the window (4 to 30) — a third of the words, though under a tenth of the points.

Pass three, suffixes. Every word you have, try adding -ED, -ER, -ING, -Y or -LY if the letters allow. In our window about one word in ten was another word on the same list plus one of those endings, so this pass is worth doing but will not double your count.

Pass four, the odd ones. What's left are words that don't follow patterns, and the list is idiosyncratic about them: NAAN was accepted on five days, ROMCOM, NOOB and ENBY on others, while HAHA and TATA were rejected even when every letter was available. The solver on this site lists everything its dictionary allows; 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. Every example below comes from the game's own answer lists in the 40 hives from 1 September to 10 October 2026: the words on the left were accepted, and the words in the middle used only that day's letters and were still left off.

The Spelling Bee Forum, and other help

The game links to two kinds of official help. Its How to Play panel points to a Times article of solving tips ("This article can help"), and its menu links to the Spelling Bee Forum, the Times' own page for discussing each day's hive. Those are the places to learn the game's habits from the people who make it and the people who play it most. HintSheet's answer page is the blunt instrument by comparison: the Times' full list, grouped 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 with a routine: find the pangram first (it often contains the longer words' building blocks), then run each consonant through the common four-letter patterns, then add endings to everything you've found. The four-letter words are worth one point each and averaged 15 a day in the 40 hives from 1 September to 10 October 2026; they are a third of the words but under a tenth of the points, so they rarely carry you to Genius alone. The five- and six-letter words carry the score, and the long, rare words are for Queen Bee hunters — the part of the game where a list is genuinely useful.

Reading the letter set before you start

The seven letters tell you something about the day, though less than folklore says. A vowel in the centre did not mean a long list in our window: the nine vowel-centre hives averaged 49 words and the 31 consonant-centre hives 46. Rare letters were never in the centre, and when they sat outside — Q on 18 and 22 September, J on 21 September, X on 13 and 22 September, Z on 4 and 23 September — the lists ranged from 18 words (EQUINOX day) to 66 (ANALYZED day). Two-vowel and three-vowel hives were equally common.

What does pay is checking for productive letter groups — I, N, G for -ING; T, I, O, N for -TION; E, D for -ED — because they hand you whole families of words at once. And note where the rarest letter sits in the pangram: J led JELLYBEAN, but Q sat in the middle of ACQUAINT and EQUINOX.

A daily routine aimed at Genius

Written down because it gives structure to the search, not because it is the only way.

• 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 -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 a few points, one six-letter word is worth more 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 releases new puzzles at 3 a.m. Eastern.

"Does the answer page show the official maximum?" Yes. The words come from the game's own answer list for the day, and the maximum is computed from them with the game's scoring rules.

"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.
• Seven-letter pangram — a pangram that uses each letter exactly once (14 of our 40 hives had one, such as PITCHED and EQUINOX).

A weekly rhythm

The Times has not published a difficulty schedule for the Bee, but the 40 hives from 1 September to 10 October 2026 show a pattern worth watching: the number of accepted words rose through the week. Monday hives averaged 31 words, Tuesday 40, Wednesday 44, Thursday and Friday 48, Saturday 52 and Sunday 63. With only five or six hives per weekday that is a hint rather than a rule — 27 September, a Sunday, had 78 words and the biggest maximum in the window (431 points), but 9 September, a Wednesday, had only 20. If you play every day, expect weekend lists to be longer and plan your time accordingly.

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

The Bee's minimum of four letters is in the rules ("Words must contain at least 4 letters"), and it shapes the play. Four-letter words are one point each and averaged 15 per hive in our window, from 4 on the leanest day to 30 on the richest; they made up about a third of the words and only 7.7% of the points. The long words are the reverse. A player chasing Genius by count alone is working on the wrong third of the list; once the four-letter sweep is done, aim for length.

Frequently asked questions

Recent Spelling Bee answers

Every past puzzle is in the Spelling Bee archive. New here? Start with the Spelling Bee guide.