How to Play Spelling Bee: Rules, Pangrams & Scoring

The rules of Spelling Bee

Every Spelling Bee puzzle gives you seven letters: six arranged around the outside of a hexagon, and one fixed in the middle cell. Words have to be four letters or longer, have to be real dictionary entries the game accepts, and — the one non-negotiable rule — every word you submit must include that center letter at least once.

Beyond the center-letter requirement, you're free to combine the seven letters however you like. Any of the seven can repeat inside a single word as many times as needed, and you never run out of a letter to reuse. Letters that aren't among the day's seven, though, can't appear in a valid answer at all — a word that's otherwise legitimate but pulls in an eighth letter gets rejected outright.

There's no move limit and no timer built into the base game: you keep submitting words for as long as you want, and your running total is what determines your rank for the day, covered further down.

What is a pangram?

A pangram in Spelling Bee is a word that uses all seven of the day's letters — the center letter plus all six outer letters — at least once each. It doesn't have to use each letter exactly once; repeats are fine as long as every one of the seven shows up somewhere in the word. Pangrams tend to be longer, less common words precisely because packing seven distinct letters into one answer is a tall order.

Most puzzles hide at least one pangram, and finding it is often the single biggest point swing available in a given day's list — a meaningful jump toward Genius or Queen Bee in one submission. Some solvers deliberately hunt for the pangram before anything else, scanning the seven letters for a plausible combination rather than working through short words first.

How scoring works

Every valid word earns points based on its length. A four-letter word is worth one point flat, regardless of which letters it uses. Anything five letters or longer earns one point per letter — a six-letter word scores six points, an eight-letter word scores eight, and so on. There's no bonus for rare letters or unusual word choices; length is the only variable once a word clears the four-letter minimum.

Pangrams get an additional flat bonus on top of their length-based score — the puzzle rewards using every letter in the hive, not just writing a long word. Between the length scoring and the pangram bonus, your running total climbs toward a maximum score for the day, which is simply the sum of every valid word in the puzzle's full answer list.

The ranking ladder: Beginner to Queen Bee

Rather than showing you a raw score against an unknown maximum, the game translates your points into a named rank that climbs as you go — Beginner, Good Start, Moving Up, Good, Solid, Nice, Great, and Amazing are the early-to-mid tiers, each unlocked at a fixed percentage of that day's maximum possible score.

Genius sits well above Amazing but still comfortably below the absolute maximum, which is why it functions as most solvers' real target for the day — reachable without needing to find every obscure word on the list. Queen Bee, the top rank, is reserved for the players who find every single valid word, pangrams included; it's a completion badge as much as a score threshold.

Strategy for scoring higher

1. Find the pangram early. It's usually worth more than several short words combined, and knowing it exists can help you spot letter combinations you'd otherwise overlook.
2. Work through consonant-vowel pairs systematically. Pick a starting letter pair — center letter plus one outer letter — and brainstorm every word you can that begins that way before moving to the next pair.
3. Don't skip four-letter words. They're worth only one point each, but there are usually more of them than any other length, and they add up fast toward Genius.
4. Watch for common prefixes and suffixes. Endings like -ING, -ED, or -ER can turn one root word into two or three separate valid entries if the extra letters are available in the hive.
5. Come back to the puzzle later if you're stuck. A fresh look after a break often surfaces a word combination that wasn't obvious on the first pass — the letter set doesn't change, only your read of it.

More NYT puzzle guides

Spelling Bee is one of several daily word puzzles TodayHint covers. If you'd rather chain letters through a box, see how to play Letter Boxed, or for a classic five-letter guessing game, see how to play Wordle. Prefer a grid you fill in with clues? How to play the Mini Crossword covers NYT's five-minute crossword format, and the TodayHint homepage rounds up hints for every game the site tracks.