How to use the Spelling Bee solver
Enter the puzzle’s centre letter in the yellow hexagon, then the six surrounding letters in any order. You can type straight through: the cursor jumps to the next empty cell, duplicates are refused and arrow keys move around the hive. Press Solve the hive and every word that follows the rules appears, grouped by length with pangrams on top.
To keep some challenge, use the Hint grids tab instead of the answer list. It tells you how many words start with each letter at each length, plus the two-letter starts, so you know what to look for without seeing the words themselves.
Spelling Bee rules in a nutshell
- Words must be at least four letters long and include the centre letter.
- Only the seven hive letters may be used, but any letter can repeat.
- Four-letter words score 1 point; longer words score their length.
- A pangram uses all seven letters and adds a 7-point bonus.
- Proper nouns, hyphenated words and obscure or offensive terms are not part of the official list.
Strategies that find more words
Start with the pangram: look for common endings such as -ING, -TION, -MENT or -ABLE that fit the hive and build backwards. Then work through prefixes and suffixes you can add to words you already have (RE-, UN-, -ED, -ER). Doubling letters helps too: if you found TOOL, check TOOT and LOOT. Finally, use the rank table to see how far you are from Genius and whether a long word is worth the hunt.
For the daily puzzle, see today’s Spelling Bee answers, or try the Blossom word finder for Merriam-Webster’s flower-shaped cousin of the game.