Spelling Bee Solver
Type the centre letter and the six outside letters, and every word the ENABLE dictionary allows appears at once: the pangrams first, then each length in its own group with a count beside it. The honeycomb fills in as you type and shows which letter is required rather than leaving it to a note under a text box, and once all seven are in, choosing any outside hexagon makes that letter the centre so the same seven letters can be checked from a different angle. The word list is named on the page, it downloads once from this site when you first solve, and every answer after that is worked out in your browser.
Solve any Spelling Bee
Type the centre letter and the six around it, and every word the ENABLE list allows appears, grouped by length, with the pangrams first.
Honeycomb: the centre letter and the six outside letters are empty. Type them into the two fields below.
A word counts when it contains the centre letter, uses only these 7 letters and is at least 4 letters long. Letters may be reused as often as the word needs. The ENABLE list, 1.7 MB, downloads once when you first solve and every answer after that is worked out in this browser.
Common questions
- Which dictionary does this use, and why do the answers differ from the puzzle's?
- ENABLE, the Enhanced North American Benchmark Lexicon: 172,823 words, public domain, and the list a large share of word games are built on. It is the same file the anagram solver on this site already uses. A published Spelling Bee runs on its own curated list, which is much smaller and leaves out words its editors consider too obscure, too technical or unsuitable, so this page will show words that puzzle refuses. The reverse happens too: a word the puzzle accepts can be missing from ENABLE. What the page promises is narrower and checkable: everything listed obeys the three rules you typed in.
- What counts as a pangram here?
- A word that uses all seven of your letters at least once. The tool works it out from the letters themselves, not from a list of expected answers, and puts those words in their own row at the top with the count beside them. Each pangram also stays in its length group below, so a group count is the whole group and nothing is quietly moved out of it. Puzzles of this kind are usually built from a real word that uses all seven letters, so there is normally at least one to find, but this page does not assume that: if ENABLE holds no pangram for your seven letters, the row is simply absent.
- Does every word have to contain the centre letter?
- Yes, and that is the rule that makes a Spelling Bee different from an anagram. A word qualifies only when the centre letter appears in it, so a word made entirely from the six outside letters is left out even though every letter it uses is on the honeycomb. The centre hexagon is filled in the accent colour to keep that visible while you work, and the chip beside the comb names the required letter in words. If you want to see what a different required letter yields, choose any outside hexagon: it becomes the centre and the old centre moves to the hexagon you chose.
- Can a letter be used more than once in a word?
- Yes, as many times as the word needs. That is the puzzle's rule and it is what the solver implements: the seven letters are a permitted set, not a rack of tiles to be used up. TOLLING is legal on a honeycomb with one L, and INTAGLIO is legal with one I. The seven letters on the honeycomb do have to be different from each other, though, so a repeated letter between the centre and the outside is refused with a message naming the letter to change.
- Are these today's Spelling Bee answers?
- No, and the page never claims to be. It holds no puzzle's answer list and fetches nothing but the ENABLE word list from this site, so it cannot go stale overnight and it works on a puzzle from any day, including one you made up. You type the seven letters you are looking at and the tool filters a dictionary by the rules of the game. That is also why it stays useful for practice combs, old puzzles and word games that borrow the same seven-letter format.
- What does the minimum length control change?
- It sets the shortest word the list will show: four, five or six letters. Four is the floor because a Spelling Bee never accepts a three-letter word, so nothing shorter is worth listing, and a value passed in from outside that range is pulled back into it rather than silently ignored. Raising it drops the shortest groups out of the list entirely, which is the quickest way to bring a long answer down to the longer words worth trying.
- Is anything I type uploaded?
- No. The page makes one request, to this site, for the word list, and it makes that request when you first solve rather than when the page loads, so reading the page costs nothing. Your seven letters are matched against the list inside your browser, so there is no search history to keep and nothing to send. Once the list is in memory, solving carries on working with the network switched off. The letters and the minimum length are remembered in this browser so the page opens where you left it, and Start over at the top of the page forgets them.
- Why does the first solve download a file, and how big is it?
- Because filtering a dictionary needs the dictionary, and this tool has no server to hold one. The ENABLE list is 1.7 MB of plain text and it is fetched the first time you ask for an answer, not when the page opens. It is then held for the rest of the session, so every later solve takes a few milliseconds. If the download fails, the page says so and offers Try again instead of showing an empty result that looks like a real answer.
Every word shown satisfies the rules you typed in: it contains the centre letter, uses only your seven letters and is at least the length you set. The word list is ENABLE, a public domain dictionary of 172,823 words, and not any puzzle's own answer list, so a word here may be rejected there and a word it accepts may be missing here.