Glossary of Spelling Bee Terms (Published 2021) (2024)

FAQs

Do spelling bee contestants get a list of words? ›

They are given printouts including words Nos. 770-1,110 — those used in the semifinal rounds and beyond — with instructions that those sheets of paper cannot leave the room. Hearing the words aloud with the entire panel present — laptops open to Merriam-Webster's Unabridged dictionary — sometimes illuminates problems.

While the Spelling Bee uses its own dictionary, which has been painstakingly crafted over years of trial and error by our puzzle editors from many different parent dictionaries, articles default to just one: Webster's New World College Dictionary, which, while expansive, doesn't quite cover 100 percent of the pangrams ...

If the player finds all of the possible words in a given puzzle, they achieve the title of "Queen Bee". There are rarely any exceptions to this game, except that the letter S will never be included in any puzzle.

Pangram — A word that uses all seven letters at least once. Some puzzles will have more than one pangram. A pangram is worth seven extra points.

The Spelling Bee word list also doesn't include hyphenated words, proper nouns, curse words or words that are deemed to be obscure. The message “not in word list” will appear for words of these types.

There is at least one pangram in each game. Sometimes there are more. Entering the pangram in a game scores players a bonus of seven points, in addition to the points received for the length of the word.

“Word games will not improve brain health in isolation. It is only one ingredient in the recipe for success,” Dr.

There are only 7986 combinations of seven letters that offer a pangram, meaning there are 7 x 7986 = 5.5902 × 10⁴ possible.

Why is there no S in Spelling Bee? ›

The puzzles never include the letter S, because then, almost every word players find could be made plural. But you can be on the lookout for plural forms of words that don't include an S, like "teeth" and "children."

All the letters of the English alphabet are used in this pangram: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." The alphabet's 26 letters cannot be put together to form a single English word. The 26-letter non-word "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz" is the closest word to having all of the alphabet's letters.

Each word would be rated by level of difficulty, using factors like length, whether it can be spelled phonetically or has obvious etymological roots, and how “fashionable” it is.

Jacques Bailly, the bee's pronouncer, has a few tricks to ensure every word is said correctly. Mr. Bailly, who won the competition in 1980, tries to make eye contact with the speller and humanize the moment.

For any classroom, grade-level or school spelling bee, study the 150-word One Bee School Spelling Bee Study List, the 150-word Two Bee School Spelling Bee Study List and the 150-word Three Bee School Spelling Bee Study List: a total of 450 words.

Some of the hard spelling bee words for kids are liaison, chauffeur, cerise, euonym, conscientious, accommodate, macerate, rapport, bourgeoisie, qualification, accommodation, implementation, education, creation, fundamentals, functionality, etc.