Today's Spelling Bee Hints and Answer: September 30, 2026

Today's Spelling Bee puzzle details

Date

September 30, 2026

Center letter

P

Outer letters

A, C, D, E, K, N

Total words

62

Pangrams

2

Genius at

214 points

Today's Spelling Bee hints

Climb the ladder from the gentlest nudge to the strongest hint. No peeking at the next clue until you've given the current one a real try.

1. 1Word countGentle nudge

   There are 62 words hiding in today's hive, worth 305 points in total.

2. 2Points to GeniusWarming up

   You need 214 points to reach Genius, which is about 70 percent of the total.

3. 3Pangram countGetting warmer

   Today's hive hides 2 pangrams. One is 8 letters, the other is 10 letters.

4. 4Pangram first letterAlmost there

   Both pangrams start with a letter you can see on the outer ring. Think breakfast food for one of them.

5. 5Word lengthsStrongest hint

   The breakdown: 19 four-letter words, 12 five-letter, 18 six-letter, 6 seven-letter, 4 eight-letter, and 3 ten-letter words.

What does today's Spelling Bee answer mean?

How hard is today's Spelling Bee?

Difficulty: Medium

The center letter does a lot of heavy lifting today, and doubled letters are the theme of this hive, so try every promising letter twice before you rule it out. Short words with familiar endings stack up fast and carry most of the climb to Genius. Two pangrams are hiding in the list, one long and one much friendlier, and the friendlier one usually falls first. Once it does, the longer one starts looking obvious.

What were the recent Spelling Bee answers?

Our answer archive is building. Recent answers will appear here daily.

How do you play Spelling Bee?

1. You get 7 letters in a honeycomb: 1 center letter and 6 outer letters. Every word you make must include the center letter.
2. Words must be at least 4 letters long. You can reuse any letter as many times as you want within a word.
3. No proper nouns, hyphenated words, or offensive words. The game's dictionary decides what counts.
4. Four-letter words score 1 point each. Longer words score 1 point per letter.
5. Find the pangram: a word that uses all 7 letters at least once. It earns a 7-point bonus on top of its length score.

What are the best Spelling Bee strategies?

• Hunt the pangram first: it is worth big points and often unlocks the word families hiding nearby.
• Work each outer letter with the center: pair P with every other letter to spark two-letter starts like PA, PE, AP, EP.
• Add -ED, -ING, and -S endings: past tenses and plurals multiply your word count fast (though S never appears as a hive letter).
• Think in word families: if PACKED works, try PACK, PECKED, PECK, and PICK-adjacent forms before moving on.
• Use common prefixes: RE, DE, UN, and EN combine with the center letter to build longer words quickly.

What is Spelling Bee?

Spelling Bee was created by Frank Longo and launched in the New York Times Magazine in 2015. The digital daily version arrived in 2018 with Sam Ezersky as editor.

The game goes live at 3 AM Eastern Time every day. Each puzzle is guaranteed to contain at least one pangram.

The letter S is almost never included in the hive, because it would make plurals too easy. Climb from Beginner to Genius, and find every word to earn Queen Bee.

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