What Is the Spelling Bee Solver?
The Spelling Bee Solver finds the words you can make from seven letters, with one of them, the center letter, in every word. You can use it for the Spelling Bee puzzle from The New York Times and for similar seven-letter word games.
Enter the letters from your puzzle to see the words, the pangrams, and the points for each word. If you want to find the words yourself, use it as a Spelling Bee helper instead: the spoiler-free hints show how many words start with each letter and how long they are, without the words.
How to Use the Spelling Bee Solver
- Type the center letter in the first box, Center letter.
- Type the six Outer letters in the other boxes. The cursor moves on after each letter. You can also paste all seven letters into any box, center letter first.
- Press Solve or the Enter key.
- Read the results. The summary at the top counts the Words, Points, and Pangrams and shows Bingo. Below it come the Hints, the list of Pangrams, the words grouped by length, and the Rare words. Click a word to copy it.
- Press Clear to empty the boxes and start again.
Turn on Hide words to blur all the words. Click a blurred word to show only that word, and click it again to copy it. The summary and the hints stay visible, and the switch stays on while you solve more puzzles on this page.
After you solve, the link in the address bar holds the letters, for example #o-acglnt. Share
or bookmark it to open the same puzzle and results again.
Spelling Bee Rules
Each puzzle has seven different letters, and one of them is the center letter. A valid word:
- has at least four letters
- contains the center letter
- uses only the seven puzzle letters
A word can use the same letter more than once. With the letters A, C, G, L, N, O, and T and the center letter O, the words "cool", "local", and "cotton" are all valid. "Talc" is not, because it has no O.
How Points and Ranks Work
- A four-letter word scores 1 point.
- A word of five or more letters scores 1 point per letter.
- A pangram scores 7 extra points.
In the example above, "cool" scores 1 point, "local" scores 5, and "cotton" scores 6. "Contact" has seven letters and scores 7 points, but it is not a pangram, because it uses only five of the seven letters. "Octagonal" uses all seven, so it is the pangram of this puzzle.
Your rank depends on your score as a percentage of the puzzle's maximum score. Each threshold is rounded to the nearest whole point:
| Rank | Score needed |
|---|---|
| Beginner | 0% |
| Good Start | 2% |
| Moving Up | 5% |
| Good | 8% |
| Solid | 15% |
| Nice | 25% |
| Great | 40% |
| Amazing | 50% |
| Genius | 70% |
| Queen Bee | Every word found |
You can reach Genius without finding every word. If a puzzle is worth 200 points, for example, Genius starts at 140. Queen Bee means that you found every word on the game's list.
The solver does not show these ranks. Its word list is not the game's list, so its maximum score is different, and the thresholds would be wrong.
What Is a Pangram?
A pangram is a word that uses all seven letters at least once. It scores 7 bonus points on top of the points for its length, so a nine-letter pangram such as "octagonal" scores 16 points.
A perfect pangram uses each letter exactly once, so it has exactly seven letters. It scores 14 points: 7 for its length and 7 for the pangram bonus. There is no extra bonus for a perfect pangram.
The Pangrams section lists every pangram the solver finds, including rare ones, because every puzzle in the game has at least one. For the same reason, the solver counts every pangram as a common word. A perfect pangram has a "perfect" label. Pangrams are also highlighted in the word lists.
How the Hints Work
The Hints section stays closed until you open it. Both of its parts count only the common words.
The grid has one row for each letter that starts at least one word and one column for each word length that occurs. Each cell shows how many words start with that letter and have that length, and the Σ column and the Σ row show the totals.
The two-letter list counts the words that start with each pair of letters, with one line for
each first letter. For example, CA-5 CO-12 means that 5 words start with CA and 12 start
with CO.
To play without spoilers, turn on Hide words and compare the hint counts with the words you have found. The difference shows which letters and lengths still have words left.
The Bingo value in the summary tells you whether the puzzle is a bingo, which means that each of the seven letters starts at least one word.
Why Does the Game Reject Some Words the Solver Shows?
The game's word list is edited by hand. It leaves out many words that a full word list accepts, for example obscure, technical, and old words. An average puzzle has about 45 accepted words.
The solver searches about 168,000 English words. Common words are in the main lists, because they are the likely answers. Less common matches go into the Rare words section, which is closed by default. The split is an estimate, so the game can reject a common word or accept a rare one.
The totals in the summary count only the common words, so they are estimates and can differ from the game's own totals.
Does This Page Show Today's Answers?
No. The page does not show the daily puzzle or past answers. You enter the letters yourself, and the solver finds the words that match them.
The solver is free and needs no sign-up. The page sends your letters to our server to find the words. Like all requests to our server, they can stay in our server logs for up to one week. The Privacy Policy gives the details.
Spelling Bee is a game published by The New York Times Company. Character Calculator is not affiliated with or endorsed by The New York Times Company.
Related Tools
- Word Finder: Find the words you can make from your letters, with length and pattern filters.
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- Word Counter: Count the number of words and unique words in a text.