NYT Spelling Bee

Frank Longo created Spelling Bee for the New York Times Magazine in 2014 as a weekly print feature. It became a daily digital puzzle in 2018, complete with a honeycomb board, scoring ranks, and an optional pangram bonus for using all seven letters in one word.

• Launch: weekly in 2014; daily digital version added in 2018.
• Goal: build words at least four letters long using the center letter every time.
• Ranks: begin at “Good” and climb to the coveted “Queen Bee” score, with hints available to subscribers.

Official access and pricing

Play Spelling Bee at NYTimes.com/puzzles/spelling-bee. You can sample today’s puzzle for free with a New York Times account, but reaching Queen Bee, using official hints, and browsing the archive require an NYT Games or All Access subscription.

History and growth

The magazine version quickly gained a cult following, but the 2018 web release turned Spelling Bee into a daily ritual for millions. Sharing scores and the addictive bee mascot drove social virality similar to Wordle. The Times later added a “Genius” bar, random starting letters to balance difficulty, and official hints to reduce solver frustration near the top ranks.

Editors balance letter sets by mixing vowels and consonants and aiming for two or three pangrams per puzzle. Weekend boards occasionally include rare consonants (J, Q, Z) to slow down speed-solvers and push players toward longer word discovery instead of quick 4-letter bursts.

Strategy: reaching Queen Bee

• Map prefixes and suffixes: ING, ER, IST, RE, and UN endings can turn one root into multiple words.
• Hunt for pangrams early: writing the seven letters in a circle helps you visualize arrangements that use every character.
• Use alphabetical sweeps: cycle the first two letters mentally (BA, BE, BI, BO, BU) to surface overlooked combinations.
• Don’t neglect shorties: four-letter words often make up the bulk of points needed to unlock Genius.
• Center-letter anchors: start every session with 3–4 words that begin with the center letter to ensure your brain locks onto required usage.

Suggested opening: write down all possible suffixes (ING, IER, ILY) and prepend every consonant in the hive. Then pivot to the longest pangram candidate and branch off shorter variants. When stuck, switch to “hive-chunking”: pick three letters and permute them aloud until a real word surfaces.

Getting to Genius: deliberate study path

The Times’ "Getting to Genius" series encourages intentional practice: log the first 15 words you find every day and mark which letters you ignored. Rotate your starting points—begin one day with the center letter, another day with two-letter stems like ST-, TR-, or CL-. When you hit a wall, draw the hive on paper and create spoke lists of every vowel combination; this physical reset often reveals fresh pangrams.

• Opening baskets: memorize 12–15 dependable shells like "LINE-", "TAIL-", "STONE-", "PINE-", and combine with suffixes (-FUL, -ABLE, -ING, -NESS) to spin new finds quickly.
• Time splits: spend 10 minutes gathering easy fours, pause for three minutes, then sprint another five minutes chasing pangram candidates. The downtime refreshes pattern recognition.
• Spaced review: copy missed Genius-level words into a flashcard deck; revisit them weekly to internalize rare letter pairings like -EIG-, -OON-, and -ULATE.
• Reverse practice: take a completed board and hide the center letter, guessing it from remaining options. This trains instinct for which consonants or vowels make sense in the hub.

Fun facts

Spelling Bee’s scoreboard sparked the Times’ “hive mind” newsletter and a community of solvers who trade clue-style nudges instead of answers. It is one of the few NYT Games with no timer, reinforcing its cozy, meditative feel while still rewarding methodical vocabulary work.

Practice idea: revisit past puzzles and hide the center letter, forcing yourself to guess it from context. This reverse-engineering drill sharpens your awareness of which letters naturally sit in the middle of English word shapes.