The New York Times Spelling Bee, or simply Spelling Bee, is a word game distributed by The New York Times in print and electronic formats. Developed by Frank Longo, the game debuted in 2014 in a weekly print edition and was released in a daily digital edition on May 9, 2018, with a revised scoring system.
What is Spelling Bee Game?
The game presents the player with a grid of seven letters arranged in a honeycomb pattern. A player scores points by using the letters to form words of 4 or more letters that he has. However, every word suggested by the player must have a letter in the center of the honeycomb. Each character can be used multiple times. Scoring gradually increases praise for a player’s efforts such as: “Solid”, “great”, or “genius”. Each puzzle is guaranteed to have at least one pangram that, if found, gives the player the highest score. If the player finds all possible words in a particular puzzle, the title “Queen Bee” is awarded.
Creation of the game:
Spelling Bee was developed by Frank Longo at the suggestion of Will Shortz, inspired by The Times puzzle game Polygon. The game was published as weekly by The New York Times Magazine in 2014. The digital version of the game debuted on his May 9, 2018. Beatrice, the cartoon bee mascot, was designed by Robert Vinluan for the digital edition.
Since its online debut in 2018, Spelling Bee has grown in popularity and the game has been highly rated by other game publishers in the media industry. Pat Myers of The Washington Post wrote that despite being a lifelong contributor to The Washington Post, she found herself “under the spell of the New York Times Spelling Bee Game.” Nilanjana Roy from Financial Times, appreciated the Spelling Bee game as one of the most effective ways to pass the time and contact friends during the COVID-19 pandemic. Jim Memmot of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle also praised the game as a fun pastime during his COVID-19 pandemic.
In addition to the critical response, the game has also garnered quite a few fans on social media, with players posting scores and discussing word choices on Twitter every day. Several online his tools have been created to provide daily clues and analysis of mysteries, such as science fiction author William Shan’s tool.
How to Play Spelling Bee?
- The word must contain the middle letter.
- Word must contain at least 4 letters.
- Characters can be used multiple times.
- Our word list does not include offensive nouns, ambiguous nouns, hyphenated nouns, and proper nouns.
- Four letter words get 1 point each. Words longer than 5 letters get 1 point per letter. A 6-letter word gets 6 points.
- Each puzzle contains at least one “pangram” that uses each letter at least once. Pangrams are worth an extra 7 points
Tips and tricks to play Spelling Bee:
- Share the load with a friend:
CNET’s Connie Guglielmo shared this advice for bees in a tip story on Wordle. She plays Spelling Bee with her husband. One of them starts the game and finds as many words as possible. The genius level requires her 68 points, so one person works up to her 34 and another player takes over. After reaching the Genius level, everyone can play around with more words and try to reach the Queen Bee level. “In 18 months of the season, there are only two queen bees!” she says.
- Don’t forget the pangrams:
This puzzle promises that there will always be pangrams, words that use all seven of her letters provided. Just knowing there is a word may give you options. Keep sorting the letters and see if you want to find that magic word. Reusing a character or two doesn’t make it longer than 7 characters. And when you have it, check if that long word has a small word (but at least 4 letters) hidden in it.
- Check the previous game for strange words:
You can go back and watch the games from the previous day. As Guglielmo points out, over time you’ll find that it includes words you never thought of, such as “ratatat.” CNET contributor and prolific gamer Dan Avery says that like a crossword, relatively obscure words such as “acai” and “acacia” come one after the other. Below the letter are buttons to remove the letter from the guess and to Enter or Guess. In between these buttons is an unlabeled shuffle button that gives a new letter and sorts the deck for the day use this button frequently. Putting different letters next to each other can help you find obvious words you might have missed, says Guglielmo.
- Don’t forget to reuse characters Just like:
Wordle, characters can be reused. As you go through the letter clusters, think about which words commonly appear in words (EE, RR, LL) and see if you can do it here.