Spelling Bee Answers Yesterday (October 19, 2026)

The game's own Yesterday's Answers

Spelling Bee has a Yesterday's Answers panel. It shows the previous hive's letters and every accepted word, with a tick beside each word you found. If you open it before you have finished yesterday's puzzle, the game first asks whether you are sure, in the prompt quoted below.

Choosing "Play instead" takes you to that day's puzzle at its own dated address. This page works differently: it cannot see your progress, so there are no ticks, but it groups the words by length, marks the pangrams, and keeps every past day available rather than only the previous one.

So why read the Spelling Bee answers yesterday here rather than in the game? Mostly for the layout: the game shows one long alphabetical list, while this page sorts it by length and puts the pangrams first, which is how most players review what they missed.

Do you want to reveal yesterday’s answers? If you do you will no longer be able to enter words and continue to play that puzzle.— Spelling Bee, The New York Times — Yesterday's Answers prompt, read October 20, 2026

When yesterday becomes yesterday

Unlike Wordle, Connections and Strands, which follow the date on your device, Spelling Bee has one fixed release time for everyone. The game's help text says it plainly: "New puzzles are released daily at 3 a.m. ET." Until then, the previous day's hive is still the current one, wherever you are.

That makes the turnover easy to predict: midnight on the US West Coast, and mid-morning across Europe. HintSheet fetches the new list shortly after that release, and this page moves on with it, so the hive shown above is the one that finished at the most recent 3 a.m. Eastern.

One consequence: the previous hive stays playable in the game until 3 a.m. Eastern. If you are in Europe and open the game in the morning, you may still be on the hive that, on this side of the Atlantic, was already finished overnight. Check the date shown in the game against the date at the top of this page before you read the list.

Words you missed, and what they were worth

Scoring is set out in the game's rules: four-letter words are worth 1 point each, longer words earn 1 point per letter, and each puzzle has at least one pangram — a word using all seven letters — worth 7 extra points. A missed seven-letter pangram therefore cost 14 points, more than most other single words on the list.

Most missed words are short. Four-letter words score least, but they are often the easiest to overlook because they look too plain to be accepted; read down the four-letter column above and count how many you skipped.

Some words you tried will not appear at all. The rules say the list leaves out words that are obscure, hyphenated or proper nouns — "No cussing either, sorry" — so a real word missing from the list is a decision by the editor, not an error.

A concrete example: the hive of 19 October 2026 (centre letter H, pangram WHEELING) had 31 words worth 153 points in total. Ten of those words were four letters long, seven were five letters and eleven were seven letters or more. The ten four-letter words were worth only 10 points between them, about 7 per cent of the day's total; the long words carried most of the score.

Ranks are fixed fractions of the day's maximum. In the game's own table, Genius starts at 70 per cent of the possible points and Queen Bee is 100 per cent — every word on the list. The Spelling Bee answers yesterday list above is therefore also the Queen Bee list: every word on it was needed for the top rank.

Checking a word you were sure of

The commonest reason people open the Spelling Bee answers yesterday is a word the game turned down. The rules give four tests, and a rejected word fails one of them: "Words must contain at least 4 letters." "Words must include the center letter." Letters can be used more than once, so a double letter is never the problem. And the list leaves out words that are obscure, hyphenated or proper nouns.

Run your word through those in order. If it passes all four and is still missing from the list above, it was an editorial choice rather than a mistake on your part. The game's help page invites exactly that conversation — "Think we missed a word? Email us at" the address it gives — so a word you believe belongs can be put to the Times directly.

The reverse case is just as common: a word in the list that you would never have guessed was allowed. Those are worth writing down. They are the most direct way to learn where the Times draws its line between everyday vocabulary and the obscure words it leaves out.

How much a hive changes overnight

Consecutive hives are deliberately different. In the 49 pairs of consecutive days from 1 September to 20 October 2026, the size of the word list changed by 23 words at the median, and by anything from 2 to 53. The same centre letter came round on consecutive days only twice: N on 21 and 22 September (JELLYBEAN, then EQUINOX) and H on 19 and 20 October (WHEELING, then MUNCHKIN).

Pangrams vary too. Thirty-two of the fifty hives in the same window had exactly one pangram, thirteen had two, two had three and three had four. Maximum scores ranged from 60 points to 431, with a median of 224, so a hive that felt hard yesterday may simply have been a large one.

In other words, yesterday's hive is no preview of today's. The overlap is usually two or three letters, and the size of the list moves by a couple of dozen words from one day to the next.

Past Puzzles at the Times, and the archive here

The game's menu lists "Past Puzzles" (nytimes.com/puzzles/spelling-bee/hub), where earlier hives can be opened and played. Access depends on your account; the Times promotes its puzzle archives as part of a subscription.

For reading rather than replaying, every list HintSheet has published is in the Spelling Bee archive, by date, with the pangram for each day. Today's list is on the Spelling Bee answers page.

Each day in our archive opens a page with that day's letters, pangrams and full list, and links to the days on either side, so a run of hives can be reviewed one after another.

Using the previous list to play better

A full list you did not finish is the best practice material the game gives you. Five ways to use it:

• Read the pangrams first and ask what hid them; check whether a common ending such as -ING or -ED was available in the hive.
• Go down each length column and mark the words you knew but did not try. Those are habits, not vocabulary gaps.
• Look for families: one stem with several endings usually means several words on the list at once.
• Note words that looked unlikely but were accepted, and ones you expected that were left out; it tunes your sense of what the list takes.
• Compare the number of words with your total. The game says ranks are based on a percentage of possible points in a puzzle, so a long list needs more words for the same rank.
• Try the same seven letters again without looking, a day later. Words that come back easily on the second attempt were recognition problems; words that still do not come are the ones worth learning.

Recent Spelling Bee answers

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