Introduction

Stuck on the honeycomb and ready to throw your phone? It happens to the best of us. Every morning the NYT Spelling Bee drops seven fresh letters, and some days the words just refuse to show up. If you need a quick spelling answer to nudge you toward Genius, you're in the right spot.

Below you'll find the full word list from the latest puzzle, both pangrams, scoring basics, and a few habits that make tomorrow's grid easier. Everything comes straight from Today Spelling Bee Answers, so you can check your work without hunting around.

The Latest Letters and Puzzle Stats

The most recent grid on the site is dated Saturday, October 3, 2026, and its letters are A, B, C, H, L, N and I. Here's something handy: the letter I appears in every single word on the list, which strongly suggests it's your required center letter. The puzzle holds 46 answers with a maximum score of 233 points.

Genius needs 164 of those points. That's a fair target, honestly, because a couple of long words can swallow a big chunk of it in one go. The word count splits unevenly. Fourteen words are four letters long, fifteen are five letters, seven are six letters, and only two reach seven letters.

The remaining eight words run to eight letters or more. So the bulk of your points sits in the middle and the top end, not in the little four-letter words. Two pangrams live in this grid, which is a nice bonus since most days only hide one.

Full Word List by Length

Here's every valid word from the latest puzzle, sorted by length so you can scan for the group you're missing. Peek at one section only if you want to keep some of the challenge alive. A lot of players check just the four-letter group, grab those easy points, and then try to crack the longer words alone. Others skip straight to the eight-letter entries. There's no wrong way to do it.

• Four letters (14 words): acai, bail, bill, blin, chai, chia, chic, chin, hail, hill, inch, laic, lain, nail
• Five letters (15 words): abaci, alibi, blini, cabin, chain, chica, chili, chill, china, cilia, cinch, iliac, labia, lanai, lilac
• Six letters (7 words): acacia, chichi, clinch, clinic, labial, laical, niacin
• Seven letters (2 words): bacilli, hibachi
• Eight letters and up (8 words): bacchanalia, bacchanalian, biblical, bilabial, cannibal, chinchilla, clinical, clinician

Some of these are odd ones. "Blin" and "blini" are small Russian pancakes, "laic" means relating to laypeople, and "chica" is a Spanish-origin word for a girl. If a word looks strange, the dictionary has probably already accepted it.

Both Pangrams Explained

A pangram is a word that uses every letter in the puzzle at least once, and this grid gives you two. The first is bacchanalia, a word for a wild, drunken celebration, and you can read its full meaning in the Merriam-Webster entry. It's eleven letters long, so it scores eleven points plus the seven-point bonus, for 18 total.

The second pangram is bacchanalian, which is simply the adjective form with an N tacked on the end. It runs twelve letters and earns 19 points once you add the bonus. Notice how the second one sits right inside the first? That's a pattern worth remembering. When you find one pangram, always test whether a suffix like -ian, -ing, -ly or -ed gives you another. Plenty of players stop after the first and leave 19 points on the table.

Together these two words are worth 37 points, which is roughly a fifth of the score you need for Genius.

How Scoring Works

Scoring is simpler than it looks, and knowing it helps you decide where to spend your effort. A four-letter word gives you one point, and that's it. Every word with five letters or more earns points equal to its length, so a six-letter word is worth six. Pangrams add a flat seven-point bonus on top of whatever the word would score anyway. Your rank then climbs as the total rises, moving from Beginner through the middle ranks up to Genius, and finally to Queen Bee.

What does that mean in practice? Four-letter words are quick but cheap. In today's grid, all fourteen of them together give you only 14 points. A single word like chinchilla gives you ten on its own, and clinician gives you nine. If you're short on time, chase the longer words first. The official game tracks all of this for you, but it helps to know the math yourself.

Smart Ways to Work Through Tricky Grids

Some mornings the letters just look like soup. When that happens, stop staring at the whole honeycomb and break it into smaller jobs. Start with common endings and beginnings. In this grid, "clin" gives you clinch, clinic, clinical and clinician, four answers from one stem. The "bil" stem hands you bilabial, while "lab" opens up labial and labia. Once you spot a stem that works, squeeze it for everything it's worth.

Double letters are another sneaky source of points. Words like bill, hill, chill, cilia, chichi and lilac all reuse a letter, and those are the ones people forget because they feel like cheating. They aren't. The rules let you reuse letters as often as you like.

Try a bingo challenge, too. That means finding at least one word starting with each of the seven letters. It isn't an official rank, just a personal goal, but it forces you to think about letters you'd normally ignore. Here, hail starts with H, nail with N, laic with L and inch with I, so it's very doable.

Lastly, walk away for ten minutes. Honestly, your brain keeps working in the background, and the words often pop out when you come back.

Missed Yesterday's Puzzle?

We've all skipped a day and felt that tiny pang of guilt. Maybe you were traveling, or maybe the grid beat you and you closed the app in frustration. Either way, there's no need to leave the puzzle unfinished. The site keeps the previous day's complete word list and pangram available, so you can look back at what you missed and see why certain words made the official list. Head over to the yesterday page whenever you want to catch up or compare notes.

If you'd rather get a gentler nudge than a full reveal, the hints page is a good middle ground. The solver is there when you'd like to test your own letter combinations.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Queen Bee?

Queen Bee is the top status in the game. You reach it by finding every valid word in a day's puzzle, not just enough to hit Genius. Most players happily settle for Genius, so Queen Bee is the bragging-rights prize.

When does the puzzle reset?

A new set of letters goes live every day at 3:00 AM Eastern Time. The old puzzle then moves into the archive.

Is the game free to play?

Playing on the official site requires a New York Times Games subscription. Our word list, hints and pangram pages are free to read and don't ask you to sign up.

Can a puzzle have more than one pangram?

Yes. Most days have just one, but some have two, like the grid covered above.

What is a bingo?

It means you've found a word starting with each of the seven letters. It's not an official rank, just a self-imposed challenge that serious players enjoy.

Conclusion

The Spelling Bee rewards patience far more than raw vocabulary. This grid, with its two long pangrams and a pile of useful stems like clin, bil and lab, shows how a few good finds can carry you most of the way to Genius.

Use the word list when you're truly stuck, lean on hints when you want a smaller nudge, and keep your streak alive by returning tomorrow. A fresh honeycomb is waiting, and the first word is often the hardest.