Spelling Bee rules, points and ranks
Seven letters, one mandatory centre letter, and a deceptively deep word list. Here's exactly how scoring works and what the ranks mean — plus the community habits (two-letter list, pangram hunting) that make daily play sustainable.
The rules
- Words must be at least four letters and must contain the centre letter.
- Letters can repeat as often as you like.
- No proper nouns, no hyphenated words, and the Bee's list skips very obscure vocabulary.
- A new puzzle arrives daily at 3am US Eastern Time.
Scoring
| Word | Points |
|---|---|
| 4-letter word | 1 point |
| 5+ letters | 1 point per letter (5-letter word = 5) |
| Pangram (uses all 7 letters) | Word length + 7 bonus |
Every puzzle has at least one pangram — finding it is usually the single biggest score jump of the day.
Ranks
Ranks are percentages of the day's total available points: Beginner (0%), Good Start (2%), Moving Up (5%), Good (8%), Solid (15%), Nice (25%), Great (40%), Amazing (50%), and Genius at 70%. Finding every word is the unofficial Queen Bee.
How the two-letter list works
The community-standard hint format counts the day's answers by their first two letters — "CA: 5, CO: 3" — telling you where to dig without giving any word away. It's an early tier on our daily Spelling Bee page, ahead of the pangram reveal and the full list.
Getting to Genius more often
- Grind prefixes and suffixes: RE-, UN-, -ING, -ED, -ER variants of found words are frequently valid.
- Say letter pairs aloud — the Bee list loves ordinary spoken words and skips crossword-ese.
- Chase the pangram early: its 7-point bonus often covers a whole rank on its own.