Monday, May 18, 2026

Answers to yesterday's Bee

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The official answers for today's puzzle are:

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Number of Pangrams: 1

Maximum Puzzle Score: 60

Number of Answers: 16

Points Needed for Genius: 42

Genius requires between 6 and 15 words. You need at least a 7-letter word to reach genius. If you don't get the pangram, you need 93% of the total points to reach genius. If you get the pangram, you only need 60% of the remaining points to reach genius.

Other days with this pangram:

The button below will reveal a chart with the number of words by each letter. Red bars indicate that there is a pangram(s) starting with that letter.


How does this puzzle compare to other puzzles?

Today's score of 60 was in the 0th percentile of all puzzles.
The last time there was a score this low was on March 27, 2023.
The highest score ever was 537 on January 22, 2021.
The lowest score ever was 47 on March 27, 2023.

This puzzle's 16 possible answers rank it in the 0th percentile of all puzzles.
The last time there were fewer answers than this was on August 09, 2024.
The highest number of answers was 81 on June 08, 2019.
The lowest number of answers was 16 on March 27, 2023.

It takes a 7-letter word for genius.
The last time this happened was on May 17, 2026.

Today's puzzle has an average word length of 5.0.
For all Bees, the average word length has been 5.3.



Haven't I seen these letters before?

Hover over a letter to see its first and most recent appearance in the Bee!



Haven't I seen these words before?

The most common words in the Bee are:

  • noon 239
  • loll 220
  • toot 214
  • nana 199
  • naan 199
  • nene 158
  • tilt 156
  • till 156
  • lilt 156
  • mamma 152
  • mama 152
  • tint 149
  • onion 145
  • toon 144
  • onto 144
  • acai 142
  • acacia 142
  • anon 134
  • anal 134
  • olio 131
  • papa 127
  • tact 126
  • baba 125
  • lulu 124
  • lull 124
  • dodo 124
  • poop 120
  • booboo 120
  • boob 120
  • mitt 119
  • moon 118
  • mono 118
  • cocci 118
  • calla 118
  • call 118
  • loon 117
  • tartar 116
  • tart 116
  • ratatat 116
  • tattoo 115
  • attar 115
  • tutu 113
  • ally 113
  • allay 113
  • momma 111
  • aria 111
  • ammo 111
  • tatty 110
  • meme 109
  • cancan 109


How long are words in the Bee?

There have been 117,939 answers ever accepted in the Bee - with 10,985 unique words.
Below are the distributions of the lengths of these words.



Valid dictionary words not in today's official answers

You may be wondering why these words aren't here*:

  • aphtha
  • atap
  • caph
  • caput
  • chapt
  • chuppa
  • chutzpa
  • huppah
  • hutzpa
  • hutzpah
  • paca
  • pacha
  • pataca
  • paua
  • pazazz
  • phpht
  • phut
  • pupu
  • pzazz
  • zuppa

*Because the New York Times considers them obscure or offensive.

catchup

noun
  1. A tomato-vinegar-based sauce, sometimes containing spices, onion or garlic, and (especially in the US) sweeteners.
  2. Such a sauce more generally (not necessarily based on tomatoes).

chap

Etymology 1

noun
  1. (obsolete outside Britain and Australia) A man, a fellow.
  2. A customer, a buyer.
  3. A child.

Etymology 2

noun
  1. A cleft, crack, or chink, as in the surface of the earth, or in the skin.
  2. A division; a breach, as in a party.
  3. A blow; a rap.
verb
  1. Of the skin, to split or flake due to cold weather or dryness.
  2. To cause to open in slits or chinks; to split; to cause the skin of to crack or become rough.
  3. To strike, knock.

Etymology 3

noun
  1. (often in the plural) The jaw.
  2. One of the jaws or cheeks of a vice, etc.

Etymology 4

noun
  1. (authorship) One of the main sections into which the text of a book is divided.
  2. A section of a social or religious body.
  3. A sequence (of events), especially when presumed related and likely to continue.
  4. A decretal epistle.
  5. A location or compartment.

chuppah

noun
  1. The canopy over a Jewish couple during their marriage ceremony.
  2. A marriage ceremony, wedding.

chutzpah

noun
  1. Nearly arrogant courage; utter audacity, effrontery or impudence; supreme self-confidence; exaggerated self-opinion.

cuppa

noun
  1. (Commonwealth of Nations except Canada) A cup of tea (or sometimes any hot drink).
  2. (Commonwealth of Nations except Canada) Whatever interests or suits one; one's cup of tea.
  3. Pronunciation spelling of cup of.

cutup

noun
  1. Someone who cuts up; someone who acts boisterously or clownishly, for example, by playing practical jokes.

pact

noun
  1. An agreement; a compact; a covenant.
  2. An agreement between two or more nations
verb
  1. To form a pact; to agree formally.

papa

noun
  1. Dad, daddy, father; a familiar or old-fashioned term of address to one’s father.
  2. A pet name for one's grandfather.
  3. A parish priest in the Greek Orthodox Church.
  4. The letter P in the ICAO spelling alphabet.

patch

Etymology 1

noun
  1. A piece of cloth, or other suitable material, sewed or otherwise fixed upon a garment to repair or strengthen it, especially upon an old garment to cover a hole.
  2. A small piece of anything used to repair damage or a breach; as, a patch on a kettle, a roof, etc.
  3. A piece of any size, used to repair something for a temporary period only, or that it is temporary because it is not meant to last long or will be removed as soon as a proper repair can be made, which will happen in the near future.
  4. A small, usually contrasting but always somehow different or distinct, part of something else (location, time, size)
  5. (specifically) A small area, a small plot of land or piece of ground.
  6. A local region of professional responsibility.
  7. A small piece of black silk stuck on the face or neck to heighten beauty by contrast, worn by ladies in the 17th and 18th centuries; an imitation beauty mark.
  8. A piece of material used to cover a wound.
  9. An adhesive piece of material, impregnated with a drug, which is worn on the skin, the drug being slowly absorbed over a period of time.
  10. A cover worn over a damaged eye, an eyepatch.
  11. A block on the muzzle of a gun, to do away with the effect of dispart, in sighting.
  12. A patch file, a file that describes changes to be made to a computer file or files, usually changes made to a computer program that fix a programming bug.
  13. A small piece of material that is manually passed through a gun barrel to clean it.
  14. A piece of greased cloth or leather used as wrapping for a rifle ball, to make it fit the bore.
  15. (often patch cable, patch cord etc.; see also patch panel) A cable connecting two pieces of electrical equipment.
  16. A sound setting for a musical synthesizer (originally selected by means of a patch cable).
  17. An overlay used to obtain a stronger impression.
verb
  1. To mend by sewing on a piece or pieces of cloth, leather, or the like
  2. To mend with pieces; to repair by fastening pieces on.
  3. To make out of pieces or patches, like a quilt.
  4. To join or unite the pieces of; to patch the skirt.
  5. To employ a temporary, removable electronic connection, as one between two components in a communications system.
  6. (generally with the particle "up") To repair or arrange in a hasty or clumsy manner
  7. To make the changes a patch describes; to apply a patch to the files in question. Hence:
  8. To connect two pieces of electrical equipment using a cable.

Etymology 2

noun
  1. A paltry fellow; a rogue; a ninny; a fool.

path

Etymology 1

noun
  1. A trail for the use of, or worn by, pedestrians.
  2. A course taken.
  3. A Pagan tradition, for example witchcraft, Wicca, druidism, Heathenry.
  4. A metaphorical course.
  5. A method or direction of proceeding.
  6. A human-readable specification for a location within a hierarchical or tree-like structure, such as a file system or as part of a URL.
  7. A sequence of vertices from one vertex to another using the arcs (edges). A path does not visit the same vertex more than once (unless it is a closed path, where only the first and the last vertex are the same).
  8. A continuous map f from the unit interval I = [0,1] to a topological space X.
  9. A slot available for allocation to a railway train over a given route in between other trains.
verb
  1. To make a path in, or on (something), or for (someone).

Etymology 2

noun
  1. (abbreviation) Pathology.

phat

adjective
  1. (originally African American Vernacular English) Excellent; cool; very good.
  2. Sexy.
  3. Rich in texture; prominent.

pupa

noun
  1. An insect in the development stage between larva and adult.

putt

Etymology 1

noun
  1. The act of tapping a golf ball lightly on a putting green.
verb
  1. To lightly strike a golf ball with a putter.

Etymology 2

noun
  1. A regular sound characterized by the sound of "putt putt putt putt...", such as made by some slowly stroking internal combustion engines.
  2. A motorcycle.
verb
  1. To make a putting sound.
  2. To ride one's motorcycle, to go for a motorcycle ride.
  3. To move along slowly.

Etymology 3

verb
  1. To place something somewhere.
  2. To bring or set into a certain relation, state or condition.
  3. To exercise a put option.
  4. To express something in a certain manner.
  5. To throw a heavy iron ball, as a sport. (See shot put. Do not confuse with putt.)
  6. To steer; to direct one's course; to go.
  7. To play a card or a hand in the game called put.
  8. To attach or attribute; to assign.
  9. To lay down; to give up; to surrender.
  10. To set before one for judgment, acceptance, or rejection; to bring to the attention.
  11. To incite; to entice; to urge; to constrain; to oblige.
  12. To convey coal in the mine, as for example from the working to the tramway.

putz

Etymology 1

noun
  1. Fool, idiot.
  2. Jerk.
  3. Penis.
verb
  1. Waste time.

Etymology 2

noun
  1. A decoration or ornament in the Nativity tradition, usually placed under a Christmas tree.
verb
  1. (Pennsylvania Dutch) To go around viewing the putzes in the neighborhood.

tapa

Etymology 1

noun
  1. A kind of cloth prepared by the Polynesians from the inner bark of the paper mulberry.

Etymology 2

noun
  1. Any appetizer or snack served in the evening as part of tapas.

Etymology 3

noun
  1. Seasoned slices of dried or cured meat in Filipino cuisine.

captcha

noun
  1. A computerized test requiring the human user to perform a task deemed to be difficult to automate, such as entering a displayed series of distorted characters or describing images, to demonstrate that he/she is a human and not a computer program.