Glossary

These are common terms used by people when talking about the New York Times Spelling Bee.

2LL — Two Letter List: The number of accepted words that begin with the indicated two letters.

BINGO — All seven letters in the puzzle are used to start at least one word in the word list.

Center Letter — The letter in the center of the honeycomb that must be used in every word.

Pangram — A word or phrase that uses every letter in the honeycomb at least once. Some puzzles will have more than one pangram. A pangram is worth seven extra points.

Perfect Pangram — A pangram that uses each letter only once, e.g., a seven-letter pangram.

GN4L — Genius, No 4 Letters: You’ve reached Genius level without any four-letter words.

GN4L OTN — Genius, No 4 Letters, On The Nose: You’ve scored exactly the number of points to achieve Genius without using four-letter words.

GNP(s) — Genius, No Pangram(s): You’ve gotten to Genius without finding a pangram.

Hivemind — The name of the Spelling Bee community.

QB — Queen Bee. The highest achievement in the Spelling Bee, awarded to players who discover every possible word in a puzzle.

QBABM — Queen Bee All By Myself: You’ve gotten to Queen Bee without any hints from the Hivemind.

QBWG+H+2LL — Queen Bee With Grid (plus hints): You’ve gotten to Queen Bee with the use of hints, the two letter list or the grid, which appears in each Spelling Bee column.

QB-1 — One word away from Queen Bee.

QBALL — Queen Bee At Long Last.

QBWg — Queen Bee With Google.

Rejected Word — A word that is not accepted by the Spelling Bee. The New York Times word list does not include words that are offensive, obscure, hyphenated or proper nouns.