How to play Spelling Bee

The rules

• Words must contain at least 4 letters.
• Words must include the center letter.
• Letters can be used more than once.

How scoring works

• 4-letter words are worth 1 point each.
• Longer words earn 1 point per letter — a 6-letter word is worth 6 points.
• Each puzzle includes at least one pangram, a word that uses all seven letters. A pangram is worth 7 extra points on top of its length.

A pangram that uses each of the seven letters exactly once — so it is exactly seven letters long — is often called a "perfect pangram".

Ranks: from Beginner to Queen Bee

Ranks are based on a percentage of the total points available in that day's puzzle, so the point targets change every day:

Our daily Spelling Bee page works these out for you: it shows the exact Genius and Queen Bee point totals for today's puzzle, plus every other rank threshold.

Tips for finding more words

1. Hunt the pangram first. It is the biggest single score of the day. Look for common endings (-ING, -TION, -ED, -ER) and prefixes (RE-, UN-) that the seven letters allow.
2. Shuffle often. Rearranging the outer letters breaks the patterns your eye keeps falling into.
3. Build families. Once you have a word, try its plural, past tense and longer forms — and since letters repeat, try doubled letters too.
4. Work through starting letters. Go letter by letter: every word starting with the center letter, then each outer letter. Our two-letter list shows how many words start with each pair, which tells you exactly where you are still missing words.
5. Use word counts by length. If you know there are four 7-letter words left, you stop wasting time on short ones.

Using the hints on HintPuzzle

The daily Spelling Bee page starts with the letter grid, then the counts of words by first letter and length, then the two-letter starting list. The full word list stays face-down until you hold the answer tile, so you can take as little help as you want.