Spelling Bee Solver
Enter the center letter and the six letters around it. See every word with its points and the pangrams first, or switch to hints only and keep the fun.
Type the center letter (the yellow one every word must use) and the six outer letters.
The Spelling Bee Solver is a free spelling bee solver that finds every word you can make from the seven letters of a Spelling Bee honeycomb, including the pangram that uses all seven. Type the center letter and the six outer letters, press Solve, and the page lists each word with its points, grouped the way you choose. It runs in your browser, needs no sign-up, and is an independent helper rather than the official New York Times game. Use it as a spelling bee word solver when you are stuck, want to check your total, or want to see how many words are left. If you would rather get clues than answers, the hint grid and the two-letter list show where the words start without printing them out.
How to use the Spelling Bee Solver
- Type the center letter in the box for the single middle letter.
- Type the six outer letters in the second box. The honeycomb picture fills in as you type.
- Check that all seven letters are different. If one repeats, the page names the repeated letter, so fix it before you continue.
- Press Solve or Enter.
- Read the summary. It shows the number of words, the total points, and the number of pangrams, including how many are perfect.
- Open the hint grid section if you want clues first. Rows are first letters and columns are word lengths, with row and column totals.
- Scroll to the word list. Pangrams appear first, followed by all words, each with its points as a small number.
- Use Show to pick “All answers” or “Hints only (no words)”.
- Use Group by to sort the list by Length (shortest first) or First letter.
- Turn on Common words only to keep the more familiar words.
- Type or paste words you have already found into “Words you have already found”, separated by spaces, commas or lines. They are crossed out and left out of the hint counts, and the summary shows how many words and points you have found.
Your choices for Show, Group by and Common words only are remembered in your browser, so they stay the same the next time you visit.
Spelling bee meaning and definition: the puzzle or the contest?
Spelling bee can mean two different things. A school spelling bee is a contest where people spell given words aloud. The New York Times puzzle only borrows the name, and it is the honeycomb puzzle this page covers.
What is Spelling Bee game?
Spelling Bee is a word game from The New York Times. Seven letters appear in a honeycomb, with one letter in the middle, and you build words from them. This solver is an independent helper for that puzzle, not the official game, and it does not provide word lists or quiz material for school bees.
Spelling Bee rules
Every word must be at least four letters long. It can use only the seven letters shown, and it must always include the center letter. You may use a letter more than once, so a word such as MOON is valid when the puzzle includes M, O and N and the center letter is one of them. The solver follows the same rules when it lists words.
What is a pangram in Spelling Bee?
A pangram is a word that uses all seven letters at least once. Every puzzle has at least one. A seven-letter pangram is sometimes called a perfect pangram. In the built-in example with center C and outer letters I, N, L, D, U and E, INCLUDE and NUCLIDE are perfect pangrams, and INCLUDED also uses all seven letters and is longer. That puzzle has 46 words and 264 points in all.
How are points counted in Spelling Bee?
A four-letter word is worth 1 point. A longer word is worth one point per letter. A pangram adds 7 bonus points on top of its letter count, so INCLUDE is worth 7 + 7 = 14.
Spelling bee tips
Look for the pangram first, because it is worth the most. Try common endings and beginnings, such as -ED, -ER, -ING, RE- or UN-, when your letters allow them. Double letters like the OO in MOON are also worth checking.
When you run out of ideas, shuffle the outer letters in your head and think of words by their first two letters. The hint grid is useful here, because it shows how many words are left for each length.
Frequently asked questions
How do I get Spelling Bee hints without the answers?
Set Show to “Hints only (no words)”. You will see the hint grid of first letters and word lengths, plus the two-letter list, such as “TO-5” for five words that start with TO. No words are displayed.
Why does the game say “Not in word list” for a word the solver lists?
The solver uses a general list of about 52,600 English words, not the game’s own hand-picked list. Pale words are rare and the most likely to be refused, and the solver usually finds a few more words than the game counts.
Does the Spelling Bee solver give today’s answers?
No. It does not provide daily answer lists or the actual puzzle for any date. You enter the letters of the puzzle you are working on.
Is the Spelling Bee solver free, and does it send my letters anywhere?
Yes, it is free and needs no sign-up. Your letters are not sent anywhere. The word list loads once, and your option choices are saved in your browser.
Is the Spelling Bee solver the official New York Times game?
No. Spelling Bee is a New York Times game, but this solver is an independent helper and is not affiliated with the official game’s word list.
Can the solver work with puzzles that have more or fewer than seven letters?
No. It needs exactly seven letters, made up of six outer letters and one center letter, and all seven must be different.
Related tools
- Text Twist Solver: use it when you have a set of scrambled letters and want every word they make.
- Word Wheel Solver: use it for a similar letter-wheel puzzle where you build words around a fixed set of letters.
- Letter Boxed Solver: use it when you need to chain words across the sides of a box of letters.
- Word Finder: use it to search for words that match a pattern or set of letters.
- Anagram Solver: use it when you want to rearrange a single set of letters into words.
- Word Unscrambler: use it when you have one scrambled word and need the correct spelling.
- Wordle Solver: use it for the five-letter guessing game, where you narrow down the answer from clues.
- Boggle Solver: use it for the grid-of-letters game where you trace words through adjacent tiles.
About the Spelling Bee puzzle
The New York Times Spelling Bee, or simply Spelling Bee, is a word game distributed in print and electronic format by The New York Times as part of The New York Times Games. Created by Frank Longo, the game debuted in a weekly print format on February 22, 2015. A digital daily version with an altered scoring system launched on May 9, 2018.
Gameplay
The game presents players with a hexagonal grid of 7 letters arrayed in a honeycomb structure. The player scores points by using the letters to form words consisting of four or more letters. However, any words proposed by the player must include the letter at the center of the honeycomb. Each letter can be used more than once. You get one point for each letter in the word, except four letter words only score 1 point. Scoring points leads to progressively higher praise for the player's effort, such as "Solid", "Amazing", and "Genius". Each puzzle is guaranteed to have at least one pangram, a word containing at least one of each of the seven letters. Pangrams award 7 extra points (e.g. a seven-letter pangram scores 14 points). If the player finds all of the possible words in a given puzzle, they achieve the title of "Queen Bee".
In 2021, the editor Sam Ezersky stated his intention to never include the letter S in a puzzle. He said this inclusion would make the game too simple to win by adding plurals. An exception was made on March 12, 2025, when the letter S was included to celebrate the 2,500th edition of the Spelling Bee. The letter S was included also on September 2, 2025 and May 29, 2026.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article “The New York Times Spelling Bee” (revision 1362310518, 2026-07-03), authors, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Shortened: some sections and paragraphs were left out, and reference markers, images and templates were removed; wording is otherwise unchanged. This text remains available under the same licence.