Spelling Bee Tips and Tricks

This is Part 1 of a two-part series on learning to solve Spelling Bee. Be sure to check out Part 2.

“Amazing!” “Genius!” “Queen Bee!”

If someone gave you those affirmations every day, it would be great, right?

Well, let us introduce you to the New York Times Spelling Bee, a game that will not only work your brain but also boost your ego. (We’ll come back to those affirmations in a bit.)

Spelling Bee tests your spelling skills, and you move up the “ranks” by gaining points for finding more words inside a “hive.” If you’re new to the game or want to improve your Spelling Bee skills, you’ve got Jackie Frere, community engagement manager, and Isaac Aronow, associate editor of Gameplay, here to help. (And if you haven’t yet, check out our Mini to Maestro series, where we break down how to become an expert at the Crossword.)

Jackie, who as a child was schooled on Boggle and Scrabble by her mother and grandmother, considers herself terrible at Spelling Bee. She likes to help her husband find words here and there on tough days, but avoids it when she can. Isaac has had a lifelong passion for word games, and at one point played Spelling Bee every day as a break from his college work. Now, as a member of the Games team, he mostly just chimes in when his partner is stuck on the puzzle.

We set a few realistic goals for ourselves to see if we could become Queen Bees:

• Play Spelling Bee at least five times a week for four weeks.

• Slowly improve our ranks over those weeks.

• Use the tools within the app and the hints from the “Hive mind,” the online community of die-hard Spelling Bee fans.

Sound doable? It was!

Before we dive into how to improve your gameplay and what strategies worked for us, let’s do a quick run-through of the game and some things you need to know.

How to Play

• Each word you enter must include the center letter.

• Each word must contain at least four letters.

• Letters can be used more than once.

• No words that are offensive, obscure, hyphenated or proper nouns.

Here’s how the scoring works:

• Four-letter words are worth one point each.

• Longer words earn one point per letter. For example, a six-letter word is worth six points.

• Each puzzle includes at least one “pangram,” which uses every letter. Those are worth seven bonus points.

• There are nine “ranks” to move up, with one bonus rank to reach at the end. ????

If you’re at all familiar with the New York Times Crossword, you’ll notice a lot of similarities, but the Spelling Bee is also different in a few important ways. First, Spelling Bee doesn’t have a difficulty curve over the week, meaning a hive published on Tuesday could be as difficult as one published on Friday. But Sam Ezersky, the puzzle’s editor, added that “if there’s a very hard puzzle, I’m more likely to offer it on the weekend, but not always.”

Mr. Ezersky said the puzzles don’t generally have themes — but he will break one out for special occasions. “It’s cool to run themed puzzles, like when the pangram was VALENTINE on Feb. 14,” he said, but there are also coincidences. “The pangram was FURLONG on the day of the Kentucky Derby, and that was totally by accident,” he noted.

How to Start

Sometimes simply looking at a hive can be daunting, even if it’s filled with common letters like T, H, A and E.

Isaac likes to start by identifying whether a puzzle is “easy” or “hard” by looking at the set of letters. It helps him set expectations for how quickly he’ll make it to Genius.

Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned Hive mind solver, set a goal that fits your level of expertise. Maybe you just want to make it to Good by yourself and then check out the hints in the Spelling Bee forum. If you have trouble with four-letter words, try to get as many as possible before you move on to larger words. If you want a challenge, you could look for the pangrams first before moving on — but it could take a while! Of course you want to feel that you’re getting better at the game, so set attainable goals for yourself. As with any skill, the best way to improve is to practice every day and in increments.

As in most word games, there’s no right or wrong way to start. Look at your hive and see what familiar words jump out at you. If you get stuck, take a look at your list so far. Are there any plurals that you may have missed? There won’t be an S in the hive (at least, there are no plans for it now), but think about words like “feet” or “mice.”

Another easy way to win is looking at common prefixes and suffixes. Occasionally Sam is kind to us and tosses in -ING -ED, or IN. These are easy to add on to many common words. In the same vein, keep an eye out for compound words. If you see DEAD and HEAD, you can make DEADHEAD, for example.

What to Do if You Get Stuck

It happens to all of us. Here are a few tips to get you past the mental block.

The shuffling tool is a game changer. Sometimes all you need is a new perspective to unlock a few more words to make it to the next rank.

Take a break! Bee kind to yourself. You can come back to the hive multiple times throughout the day (unless your goal is to finish the Spelling Bee in as little time as possible). Inspiration may strike during a walk, a conversation, a TV show, etc. You might be surprised by how putting the game down for an hour can help you make it to the end.

“I look at the letters and enter as many words as come quickly,” Liz Kohlenberg, a longtime Spelling Bee forum commenter and Hive mind community member, said in an email. “I notice endings — -ED, -ING, -TION and so forth. Then I rotate the letters and add some more. Eventually I go to sleep. When I wake, I check the two-letter list and the grid. Sometimes that’s enough, but mostly I go to the hints for the last few words.”

Take advantage of the Hive mind! Our Spelling Bee forum is one of the best places to talk about the game on the internet. The comments are filled with hints, poems and stories to assist you in creative ways.

Finally, try out the Spelling Bee Buddy. This clever tool gives you personalized (yes, personalized!) hints that update as you solve. The best part? It actually uses hints from the incredible Hive mind and comments from the forum to help you get to Genius.

Now that you’ve got the basics down, try today’s Spelling Bee. If you’re ready for advanced solving tips, check out Part 2 of Getting to Genius.