How to play

Seven letters sit in a honeycomb. Make as many words as you can from them: every word must be at least four letters long and use the letter in the middle, and a letter can be used as often as you like. Type a word or tap it out on the cells, then press Enter. Each word you find adds to your score, and the score carries you up through the ranks — from Beginner, past Good, Solid and Great, to Genius. A word that uses all seven letters is a pangram, and every puzzle has at least one.

There is no daily puzzle and no daily limit. Pick a size, play a puzzle for as long as you like, and take the next one whenever you want. Close the tab and the puzzle waits for you.

Controls

• Type letters — on your keyboard or by tapping the cells
• Enter — submit the word
• Backspace — delete a letter · Esc — clear the word
• Space or ⇄ — shuffle the outer letters; the middle one stays put
• Answers — give up on this puzzle and see every word, with the ones you found marked
• Size — Small puzzles have 20 to 35 words, Medium 36 to 60, Large 61 to 120

Scoring

Ranks are a share of the puzzle's total: Good at 8%, Solid at 15%, Nice at 25%, Great at 40%, Amazing at 50% and Genius at 70%. Find every word and the rank reads Perfect. Genius is the real finish line — the last few words in any puzzle are the ones nobody would guess were words.

Tips

• Start from the middle letter. Every word has to contain it, so try it at the start, at the end, and doubled. A middle T gives you TAT-, -TT-, and -T at once.
• Work the endings. Once a word is in, try its relatives: -ED, -ING, -ER, -LY and the doubled-consonant forms. The list counts them all, and they are the quickest points on the board.
• Shuffle when you stall. The same letters in a new arrangement read as different words. It sounds like a superstition; it works every time.
• Hunt the pangram early. It is worth the most, and knowing which seven letters were chosen together — they always come from one — tells you a lot about the rest of the list.
• There is no S. The seven letters never include one, so there are no plurals to pad the list with — and no point trying them.

About this game

Finding words in a fixed set of letters is one of the oldest pencil games there is; the seven-letter honeycomb with a required middle letter was given its modern shape by Frank Longo's Spelling Bee, which ran in print before it became a daily fixture online. This is an independent take on the format: puzzles in three sizes instead of one a day, and as many of them as you want.

The word list comes from the English Speller Database (formerly SCOWL), assembled by Kevin Atkinson and drawing on 12dicts and ENABLE2K, trimmed to the words an ordinary speaker would recognise. That keeps every puzzle's total within reach, at the price of the occasional real word that does not count.