How to play

How to play Spelling Bee

Seven letters in a hive, one in the centre. Find as many words as you can; every word must use the centre letter.

The rules

• Words must be at least four letters long.
• Words must include the centre letter.
• Only the seven letters in the hive can be used — but you can use each letter as many times as you like.
• No hive contains the letter S, and proper nouns, hyphenated words and offensive terms are not in the list.

Scoring

Word	Points
4 letters	1
5 letters	5
6 letters	6
7 letters	7
Pangram (uses all seven letters)	length + 7

Every hive has at least one pangram. Words that are valid but rare are accepted as bonus words (marked ★): they score points and move you up the bar, but they aren't needed for Queen Bee.

Ranks

Your rank is a share of the total points in the hive. Every hive has a different total, so Genius is a different number of points each day; tap the rank bar in the game to see today's thresholds.

Rank	Share of the points
Genius	70%
Amazing	50%
Great	40%
Nice	25%
Solid	15%
Good	8%
Moving Up	5%
Good Start	2%
Beginner	0%
Queen Bee	every word found

Hints

Open the hints panel (the bulb) to see how many words are left by first letter and length, the two-letter starts and how many pangrams remain. The counts update as you find words. If you're stuck, reveal a word in two steps: first its starting letter and length, then the word. Revealed words don't score. The daily hive allows 3 reveals; unlimited mode has no limit.

Keyboard

Type letters, Backspace to delete, Enter to submit, Space to shuffle the outer letters.

Try a hive

An easy practice hive; nothing here is saved.

Ready? Play today's hive or jump into unlimited mode.